Interpreting the Development of Twitter

Hong Kong.
We're starting the last day of The Internet Turning 40 with the session that I'm in as well - but the first speaker is José van Dijck, who introduces the idea of 'interpretive flexibility' - an approach for examining technologies that remain in flux. Why and how do technologies become dominant over time; how can we trace this process while it is happening; and why is it important to do so? She is applying this specifically to Twitter (and microblogging in general) here.

There are four factors here: technologies and services, mediated social practices, cultural form and content, and business models. All of these are important when examining emerging platforms, of course. Microblogging, José says, is both a tool and a service - and its versatility is crucial to its success. When it was launched, it was unclear what it would become; by 2007, it was adopted and integrated by a large number of other social media platform, and in the process adapted its interface and technological specificities to their needs (but this took place the other way around, too). Since then, there has been an 'appliancisation' of Twitter, turning it into a closed, applied platform, and reducing its versatility and openness.

At the start, too, there were a number of social practices which Twitter was used for: self-communication, updating and checking, conversation and dialogue, group collaboration, information and news sharing, marketing and advertising, and a number of others. But this gradually reduced, she says, towards a reciprocal following, especially through the introduction of Twitter lists; there was an overall shift from one-to-few to one-to-many in the mode of communication. 'Twittering' has not yet become a brand name turned verb in the way that 'googling' has become (er, but tweeting has), though.

Demographics have also changed - during 2006 to 2008, older (male) adults dominated on the site, while since 2009, there has been a substantial increase in younger adults, with 10% of users producing 90% of tweets; men have 15% more followers than women, even though 55% of users are female.

This, José says, goes along with the shift from 'what are you doing' to 'what is happening' in the central Twitter prompt - i.e. a subtle shift from a focus on the personal to a focus on reporting events. Conversation and dialogue, and public figure updates and news tweets now surface as major uses of Twitter. Some researchers have characterised the majority of content as 'pointless babble', though others have described it as 'social connectivity' instead.

What also remains unclear is the business model of Twitter. The overall strategy so far appears to have been to build a strong user base first, and then explore potential revenue streams - tweaks in the Twitter system may be seen as a way to position the site and service for this. Direct advertising is unlikely to be a feasible model, even if Twitter operates in an almost fully commercialised environment. Pull-based sponsored content, various heavy user subscription models, search deals, service fees, fees for application designers, and metadata sales may all be possible business models, and some of these are now being explored.

The business model evolves along with the user base, of course. Twitter is evolving as a platform.Technology, users, uses, content, and business models are mutually shaping factors in the evolution of new platforms and practices; power is not equally distributed among operators and users of Twitter; it is a contested object and a field of struggle through which the tool is shaped. This is moulded by the social forces of this environment. It is important to trace these continuing processes - for Twitter as well as for other social media platforms and technologies.

Technorati : Internet Turning 40, Twitter, business, co-creation, interpretive flexibility, labour, produsage
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