Four reasons I am sticking with Twitter

In the ever-changing world of social media, everyone wants to be the first to declare the next has-been.  Last week, The Atlantic  put a stake in the ground with a 1,800 word Eulogy for Twitter where it declared that “the publishing platform that carried us into the mobile Internet age is receding.”  The story is mostly based on a hunch that “people are still using Twitter, but they’re not hanging out there.”

From a numbers standpoint, it doesn’t look like Twitter is going anywhere fast. After earnings last quarter, Twitter added 14 million new users for a total of 255 million- an improvement on the previous quarter.  Anecdotally, every teenager I know has left Facebook for Twitter (and Instagram), a promising sign for the platform.

To me, The Atlantic story sounds like a case of boredom which can, of course, happen to even the most prolific tweeter.  When that happens, my colleagues have some great ideas on how you can grab some new followers or conduct a spring cleaning of your account to freshen things up.

Here are four reasons I personally won’t be retiring Twitter any time soon.

1. It’s a publishers dream. In a Slate rebuttal to The Atlantic piece, Will Oremus posits people are making a mistake by comparing Twitter to Facebook as a social media platform. He thinks it’s better to describe Twitter as a “media platform” (dropping the social) as it connects publishers to their audiences, and says that Twitter’s “chief function is to help people keep up with what’s going on in the world, what influential people are thinking and doing at any given time.” In a 24-hour news cycle world, there is no easier way to keep up with every major news story.
2. No one does breaking news better.  When the Boston Marathon bombings happened a few miles from my home last year, Twitter was an invaluable resource for everything from breaking news to making sure my friends and colleagues were safe. Journalists told the story, police were able to communicate with the public in real-time, and bystanders could tell their loved ones they were okay.
3. It has communities hard to find elsewhere. If you are a rabid fan of Scandal, or have a somewhat niche interest like figure skating as I do, Twitter is the perfect place to find like-minded people and interact with them in a way it would be hard to do in real life.
4. It drives traffic. For many of our clients, the work they do distributing content via Twitter and engaging makes it one of the top referral sites for their website, enabling companies to reach broader audiences with content that may otherwise be lost.

I think it would be safe to say that rumors of Twitter’s impending death are greatly exaggerated.