Maybe Twitter is not so dumb after all.

I am finally starting to think that Twitter is not so dumb after all. But it took some really smart people I admire to convince me, like the Pew Research Center and their Internet &
 American Life project.

Their efforts look at the evolution of the internet and how Americans are using it, and how it impacts their lives - but more on that shortly.

At first I thought Twitter was a purely narcissistic pursuit - an egotistic preoccupation with one's self, personal preferences, aspirations, needs and how users might impact the way they were perceived by others. Consider a recent tweet by Lindsay Lohan letting her 8 million best friends on Twitter know she'd be on the David Letterman show tonight.

Jen Selter in action.

Another even more egregious narcissistic user example is Jen Selter - whose claim to fame is popularizing #belfies - butt "selfies" of all things. (There are some scary shots on this # stream!) Vanity Fair reports in its April 2014 "Rear Admirable" article that Selter made a name for herself on Instagram, with nearly 3 million followers based on only 401 posts.

Looks like popular content seems to translate well between social media networks, as a result her famous derrière extraordinaire has generated 453K followers on her Twitter page. Not so sure she's playing as well on Linked In - at least I could not find a high profile listing for her there.

But let's consider what is great about Twitter these days. Every day millions of people use Twitter to create, discover and share ideas with others. I like the fact that it forces users to make complicated ideas simple with its 140 character limit. It makes for a great "content sign post" to share with others.

Twitter has become an integral part of many people's "personal digital storefront" or "online brand." The only cost is the time it takes to set up your account and learn how Twitter works. Hubspot (the inbound marketing wizards) even offer a free guide "How to get 1000 followers on Twitter" . It's like following a simple cookbook recipe and it works! Imagine my delight when I discovered my 500th Twitter follower was Ellen DeGeneres - who must have liked the animal friendly posts I put up on Twitter.

Businesses are using Twitter as a marketing and customer service platform like 
Bank of America (@BofA_help). Some firms have shown great skill in making their marketing efforts viral like Dell, who claims to have monetized their Twitter presence  a few years back the tune of $ 6.5 million. It also makes for a great marketing intelligence platform by simply using the Twitter search function to see what people are saying about your firm or the competition.

Pew Research Twitter Data Generated Network Maps.

The real beauty of Twitter may be in using the big data it generates. According to Pew Research Twitter conversation have six different structures ranging from "Polarized Crowds" that focus on political issues to "Community Clusters" that gather to comment on global news stories. Pew does a great job of explaining what these clusters are, and why they matter.

Pew has gone on to do some amazing mapping using this data. According to Marc A. Smith - the Director of The Social Media Research Foundation and main author of the new report on Twitter maps - "These network maps provide new insights into the role social media plays in our society."

Marc A. Smith

"Our work is in the spirit of the observational researchers like 17th century botanists describing the variety of flowers on newly discovered island or astronomers whose new telescopes that allowed them to see different categories of galaxies. We are looking at things that have existed for a while, but with new tools that allow us to describe them in fresh ways."

The structure of these Twitter conversations may say something meaningful about how engaged users discuss topics, find each other and share information. While Twitter users are only 1 in 5 people on the internet and a scant 14% of the adult US population - they are an interesting "leading indicator" group to watch.

And Twitter seems to be in "permanent beta" - always changing, always improving. They've just announced a significant format upgrade that is now being rolled out to make the platform work even better. Some say they're moving to be more like Facebook, but they seem to have their own upward trajectory. 


So maybe Twitter isn't so dumb after all, especially when it can provide free and readily accessable data-based insights into the way people think and behave - a marketer's dream come true.