Old McDonald had a farm, and on that farm he had a...blue bird?

WHO'S DRIVING TWITTER'S POPULARITY, NOT TEENS
(The New York Times)

 Despite the usual demographic who favors social networking technology, teens have not responded to Twitter as positively as venues such as MySpace and Facebook. However, given this fact, it would seem that the microblogging site would simply not take off. Quite the contrary, as it has found a solid fanbase in the older social set, as well as celebrities. “Adults are just catching up to what teens have been doing for years,” said Jeremiah Owyang, an industry analyst studying social media.

As a journalist, I view Twitter not as a useless venue for broadcasting your every thought and action (as it would be commonly misused by the general populus), but as a means for sharing photos and news updates, and even marketing purposes. The flight that landed in the Hudson River was not immediately covered by newspaper or CNN, but by Tweets. The Everyman is now a citizen journalist with the means at his fingertips to share photos, video, and other amateur coverage of events the typical reporter simply could not get to in time. It's on-the-spot reporting like this that is saving journalism as an industry -- it's relateable and we as journalists are no longer stuffy unknowns behind a Moleskine, but a part of society . As well, catering to the older crowd may prove to enhance Twitter's longevity as we have seen from the slow demise of MySpace, Livejournal and Friendster to the mercy of Facebook that teens are a very fickle audience. 


Link to story at nytimes.com:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/technology/internet/26twitter.html?_r=1&hp