Chit chat or violence: the other side of Twitter

People used to thinking of Twitter as a middle class tool for celebs, journalists and PRs to tweet about networking meet ups might have been surprised this week to find out it’s also being used by New York gangs to set up fights, especially as the received wisdom was that Facebook and MySpace were for the kids, Twitter was for fans of Stephen Fry.

It’s possibly not such a surprise for those who regularly click on the trending topics and discover the conversations happening on a whole other, less PC Twitter. It’s been said before but it’s worth repeating: Twitter is a platform rather than a culture or a movement. In fact Twitter actively encourages the separation of its users into tribes through the ‘follow’ option and now, even more so through the new list option. People follow like-minded people and discover even more like-minded people through them. It’s self-reinforcing. The rest go by the wayside and the various tribes rarely get to talk to or know each other.

What this means for people in our industry trying to use Twitter as a branding exercise is that they need to really focus in order to open up the section of Twitter most relevant to them. This isn’t so much a question of identifying top influencers, but understanding the way the tribe works: what they talk about, what makes them laugh, what they hate etc.

A good example is the Meerkat from the Compare the Market ads, who recently won a Golden Twit for services to Twitter humour and brand building. The Meerkat tweets a few times a day, takes time to talk to followers and always has a consistent mildly satirical persona that appeals to British, net-savvy consumers, without compromising the brand already established through the ads.

This is one way of doing it. Reaching less open, easy-going audiences might be a different story. How you’d reach the gangs of New York is anyone’s guess.