I promised a number of Twitter users who befriended me that I'd share the findings of the survey I launched about twitter usage. And so, I thought I'd wrap up this three part article on the Psychology of Twitter by discussing the results of the survey and sharing a few final observations about this new modality for compressed communication.
Here is the my first article on the social phenomenon of Twitter and here is the followup article that dealt with the neurophysiological aspect of twittering.
So, let's talk about the survey. We received 63 responses, with people contributing major essays about twitter usage. So it's more of an in-depth ethnographic study than a longitudinal study. Of these users, 83% identified themselves as moderate to heavy users of Twitter. One user said, "I spurt, so I go from heavy to moderate usage - sometimes my life is more interesting than others :D" The average respondent has about 1000 followers, and has tweeted about 1500 times. The most popular tweeter had 17,000 followers.
Now, as to reasons for twittering... the number one reason - stated by 56% of the respondents - was because it's fun. This was followed by 50% saying they do it to meet new people, and 44% saying they do it to stay in touch with friends. And a full 42% use it as a marketing channel. And a small number are using it to track keyword trends or twitter meme (aka twemes). Using the # function, people are looking for others for professional and non-professional colleagues to network with. Another user stated, "I'm self employed and often work from home. it's my virtual water cooler." Yet another heavy user says, "Twitter has completely changed my life. I've found new friends thanks twitter, I've found several jobs thanks twitter." Another user agrees that Twitter is not a bad channel for finding work, "I found a client through Twitter for the first time. I now get many job offers a week." A third user shared a sentiment that captures the value of Twitter quite well, "It's the best anti depressant on the market. And it's free!!"
Since I brought up the idea of a Maslovian hierarchy around Twitter, I thought I'd ask where on the pyramid our users were playing. The primary impacts were entertainment & creativity (in the high 70s), followed by "gaining a sense of belonging", self-actualization and livelihood (I expect this means all the savvy twitter marketers out there). Interestingly, finding love ranked VERY low. Some examples include, "My best friends are on twitter. Every time I need advice, help, suggestions or to inform them what Im gonna do, I do it that way." An artist/designer shares, "When I needed positive feedback on one of my new designs (I was at the point that I was about to give up), I asked the opinion of my followers, and I was met with immense positive reactions. The design was a success!" This shows that the difficult path of the artist can be supported by community.
In terms of self esteem, one user shared, "When I discovered that I was a total stranger's 'first follow', it totally boosted my self esteem!" She continues to share, rather poignantly, "I do sometimes use Twitter as emotional anesthesia: When my life as a stay at home mom to 6 children under 10 has its truly absurd moments, it can help to tweet a general cry of despair. It helps me to step back, and not take everything so seriously." Another shares, "When people retweet my blog posts or put me on a #followfriday, I feel very validated." It's amazing how people interpret the number of followers as an indication of social status, sometimes, as a validation of yourself in life.
In terms of assuaging despair, one user shared something quite interesting, "When my grandmother died, my friends sent supportive tweets to me. It was easier - emotionally - reading their messages, than it would have been receiving phone calls from them." That's something I never considered... that certain forms of communication are emotionally less trying than others.
For me, the most interesting responses were, "Twitter gives me a vague sense of myself as an entity who's left a trail in time and space", and "I look at Twitter as a casual diary or log or journal, providing a narrative for my life." There's definitely some existential angst being relieved by twittering, as it provides a way to validate yourself and type into the ether, "I am! I exist! I like yogurt!"
So that brings us to it. I asked people to share their deepest philosophical insights about Twitter, and they came through. My fave was "Twitter is so revealing. It's addictive, frivolous and exposes our depth (or lack of it) in the space of 140*infinity characters." Very Zen. Another advises, "Twitter is like an enormous cocktail party. Just don't barge in and start talking about yourself!" Another: "Jung was right about the collective consciousness! Perhaps not in the ways he'd dreamt, though." One user shared a particularly pithy review, "Twitter is simply a communication tool that greatly decreases the friction that time, place and meeting contributes to communication. Its primary contribution to social change is the unpredictable transmission patterns and velocities of ideas, moods and memes through the social network."
Here's another brilliant observation: "I have two philosophical observations... First, Twitter serves a vital individualistic function of announcing an open communication channel. The act of twittering, regardless of content, communicates that this person is ready to engage. The maintenance of open channels, or awareness of when they are closed, can be an overlooked aspect of communication. Second, with each tweet by each new user, we are learning to become a more transparent culture. I used to maintain separate identities in separate circles, but my stress levels went way down when I just started representing myself as a single identity and learning to share. Twitter is an excellent tool for this because of the opt-out, asymmetrical nature of the follow network."
A Myers-Briggs Certified Administrator shared, "I believe a lot of people in the Twitterverse are not behaving according to their type in the social media world. This forum allows those who do not normally openly network or get out in larger social audiences to feel completely comfortable in the privacy of their home or office by themselves to connect in ways they wouldn't in person. Many of us who DO enjoy the face to face networking and exposure are struggling with social media because we want the face to face connection as much as we want the networking." An astute observation.
Some negative comments were interesting. For example, "Bottom line... narcissistic all over the board! It's not so much that everyone has issues and comes to twitter. It's a very strange phenomenon that is occurring in this arena." Or this contribution: "Lifestreaming is not my thing; I don't care what every celeb and his dog had for breakfast. I enjoy the intellectual community of like-minded individuals who can add insight and material to my writing and teaching." Here's one more: "Twitter is yet another technology that has the potential to distract us and leave us less time for deep thinking and deep relationships. Google may not be 'making us stoopid' (to quote Nicholas Carr) but Twitter could."
But one user summed it up perfectly, "I think we are all trying to organize the new information age. We want to establish our online existence, and all these social networking sites are helping us do that. This will pass and one day become just part of life. We will all be given a place on the internet at birth, and all our virtual world will be connected at that place. We all have to express ourselves, in one way or another. Currently people do so mostly by pretending to be social marketing experts, or by showing their cleverness in finding cool websites made by others. But soon we will have art and music and other kind of expressions more easily coming through."
