The Triangle

Issue date: 7/3/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Mike Arrison

The social networking site Twitter may be losing the interest of its current users as quickly as it is generating new ones.

A Harvard Business study concluded that 10 percent of Twitter users generate 90 percent of the content. The study also found that more than half of the users who create an account only update their status or, "tweet," once in their lifetime.

"When Twitter first came out, I thought it was the next big thing, and then I used it a few times, and noticed I could be doing better things with my time," Justin Lee, a pre-junior majoring in business administration, said.

Ivan Felder, a sophomore lab coordinator said he would prefer read national interest announcements on the news rather than on Twitter.

According to the BBC, Twitter is a social networking site that has changed the way that many people, including politicians, celebrities and the average Joe on the street keep track of what their friends are doing or what they are thinking.

The Harvard Business study also said the most popular person that people follow is the movie star Ashton Kutcher, who has over two million followers.

"The problem with most people is that their lives are not that interesting, and I really don't want to take the time to go out of my way and know what they are thinking," Lee said.

Twitter's official blog states that use of the site has increased significantly internationally. It recently came into play on the global scale, when the election in Iran ended in controversy. The guardian reported that the government of Iran jammed cell phone signals, text messaging services and enforced heavy censorship on many Web sites and blogs.

With Iran's Revolutionary Guard enforcing the restrictions, much of the information about the fall out of the election came in the form of 140 character messages. The Associated Press reported that the information coming through the micro blog site were considered so important that head officials within the state department requested that Twitter refrain from going down for scheduled maintenance in order to keep information flowing.

"It's great that the service was available when others were not, but that doesn't mean I'm going to get an account," Imran Husain, a sophomore biology major, said.

Twitter may not be an ideal for all users to stay in tune with news and personal updates, but as a business it continues to expand.

"Twitter is an excellent example of entrepreneurship, an idea that manifested into a multimillion dollar business." Tianxu Chen, a business professor, said.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools