Review 7: "Why teens haven't embraced Twitter... yet"

Link to article

This article, on a site called YPulse: Youth Marketing to Teens, Tweens & Generation Y, outlines some reasons why teens might not use Twitter as avidly as twenty- and thirty-somethings. The author, simply identified as "anastasia," writes, "As long as teens can update their status via MySpace and Facebook for their friends as well as IM and text, Twitter doesn't really add to the existing technology."

She has a valid point. Twitter's social networking capabilities are rather limited, when compared to Facebook. Users can follow others, create lists of followers, privately message other users (as long as it is 160 characters or fewer), and retweet what other people have written. They cannot take quizzes through Twitter (although there are external sites that can connect to Twitter), post galleries of images, or join groups and causes. When Facebook can do all of these (and quite a bit more), why would teenagers expend extra energy and time on something they will use very infrequently?

Because, "anastasia" notes, with Twitter, they can follow celebrities, musicians, and entertainment brands. This gives the Twitter user an inside look at favorite bands, actors, singers, and commerce. For example, I personally follow Dita Von Teese (@ditavonteese) (a famous burlesque performer), Diablo Cody (@diablocody) (screenwriter), and Adam Savage (@donttrythis) (host of Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel). I get to read their musings on life (Dita Von Teese recently moved to Paris), work (Adam Savage recently met the President at a science event), and humor (Diablo Cody is generally hysterical). For a teen who wants up-to-the-second news on the people they care about, Twitter is the social networking tool to use.

Twitter also allows teens to @ reply to their favorite celebrities and personalities. For example, I tweeted to Nat Standiford, author of How to say goodbye in robot, that I loved her book. She tweeted back almost instantaneously thanking me. It feels fantastic to have that kind of accountability for the people whose books I like to read!

This article made me think about the best ways librarians can use this tool.

1) Librarians who decide to make Twitter part of their website need to be aware that teens often scan tweets instead of carefully reading them. Therefore, tweets should be brief. Adding a link and a mysterious caption makes your tweet more compelling.

2) Tweet often! I am following some people on Twitter who I forget exist because they tweet so infrequently.

3) Don't make all your tweets about library events or books. Even saying something like, "Have you seen New Moon yet?? I'm on Team Jacob ;)" can pique interest.

4) Have interesting followers yourself. Take a stand on something. Don't be that librarian who only follows libraries, authors, and publishers (although these are important, too).
Try following: @ActuallyNPH (Neil Patrick Harris)
@GLEEonFOX
@mental_floss (Mental Floss magazine)
@adammshankman (judge on So You Think You Can Dance?)
@amberbenson (actress from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, author)
@realjohngreen (ok, I said don't just follow authors) (author of Paper Towns)
ETC.!

5) Know what you are doing. Don't make spelling errors, don't tweet things to all your followers that could just be tweeted to an individual, and remember the Golden Internet Rule: YOUR CLEVER SARCASM SOUNDS LIKE MEAN JERKINESS ON THE INTERNET.


In short: to get teens to use Twitter, librarians have to be Twitter users themselves, not just librarians who are trying to stay "hip."