Mark Pollard recently held a meeting where he freely shared his insight and understanding of Twitter with anyone wanting to learn more. Of course, there was no “backchannel” or “tweetstream” for the event as it was a talk for people who have yet to delve deeply into Twitter and the noisy place it can sometimes be.
The event was held at The Leading Edge and coordinated by Kelly Tall. It sounds like there was plenty in-room debate, with Mark describing the audience as falling into five categories:
- Social professionals: natural communicators who enjoy networking and talking about what they do.
- Banterholics: on Twitter to talk, exchange witty commentary and pass the occasional social judgement.
- Lost and confused: ‘someone else made me do it’ – perhaps a bit of social pressure has driven them onto Twitter and they’re trying to work out what to do next.
- Looking to mobilise: on Twitter to influence.
- Hell nos: outright rejecters of Twitter who see no point or purpose in it.
My personal experience in speaking about Twitter with non-Twitter folks correlates with Mark’s view – that there is definitely a chasm between the committed Twitter users and those who are yet to try or are in the early stages of “testing the waters”. As with any (social) technology, the challenge is how to find value quickly and how to make it easy to assimilate it into your work/private life. With those two barriers out of the way, you can quickly begin to expand your use and your network. In fact, it reminds me of my early blogging experiences.
Mark has made his presentation available which he would love for you to share with anyone who asks the question – Twitter. WTF?
Thank goodness he identified 5 segments not 4, otherwise someone would have come up with some kind of a “segmenting the twittersphere” graph/visualisation. 😉