Ed Lee from Blogging Me, Blogging You wrote an entry today entitled “Twitter in Circle Jerk Shocker”.
Presented for our consumption is the following set of statistics.
As per these new statistics on the use of Twitter in the UK released by Nielsen, it appears as thought 7% of all UK twitter users are creating 70% of the content, which Lee equates to a “circle jerk”. I definitely agree that this statistic is not surprising and that if these 7% of Twitter users were to leave Twitter tomorrow, the service would disintegrate.
That being said, I firmly believe that Twitter is like the government. For instance, only 3-7% of the population is employed by the government, depending on which statistics you believe, however, they are the decision makers. While they’re influenced by the greater population, they hold the keys to the creation of government content.
I feel like Twitter is much the same, except in a self-governed sort of way. Those who have stepped up to create the content have the opportunity to have their content consumed by everyone else and influence everyone else’s content. So while the tool may be ephemeral, the impact of the tool is widespread.
We must remember that the medium of many-to-many media is still new in terms of it’s impact on communication evolution, and that Twitter but a building block to the overall evolution. The influencers may move on but the impact will be long lasting to everyone, not just those involved.
I say architects of the future rather than circle jerk.
