Comments on: Observations: College Students & Social Media

By: Jon Payne

Jon Payne — Wed, 27 May 2009 09:51:15 +0000

Good thoughts here Hollis. As with many things I think the number that are signed up versus the number that actively participate are probably drastically different.

Membership or numbers of accounts is probably not a great measure of participation and value/health of a social media site, as that number can be easily skewed by spammers and by businesses who sign up on every social media site they find as a matter of brand protection (with no plans to ever use the account or participate).

By: Hollis Thomases

Hollis Thomases — Tue, 26 May 2009 18:49:28 +0000

Jon, I think the media hype alone is driving more people of all ages to Twitter (especially the influx of celebrity tweeters), though I think how frequently and for what means folks *use* Twitter is another whole story.

A 4/19/09 research study, “College Students are Twitter-less,” conducted by the PRSSA chapter of the University of South Florida, came to the conclusion that although 99% of those surveyed use social networking sites, only 15% have an account with Twitter and 34% have never even heard of the site. And, some 58% of the students who do have Twitter accounts never use the service or rarely log-on.

The recent comments to this post seem to support its findings, and based on what I’m seeing in the Twitterverse, I do feel that college kids are still either shying away from Twitter or are using it more like SMS or IM than anything else. In my opinion, the rare few seem to know how to “work it” to help position them for internships or future careers.

By: Jon Payne

Jon Payne — Tue, 26 May 2009 11:09:15 +0000

Hollis, have you seen this change much in the 6+ months its been since you were on this panel? I know Twitter has grown quite a bit since that time… perhaps college students just weren’t early adopters here?

By: Nancy Pricer

Nancy Pricer — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:48:46 +0000

I work at Tarleton State University and last week we had a bad ice storm. While spying on Twitter for *tarleton* I found a student has twittered that he couldn’t believe that we did not cancel classes. An hour later that same student tweeted that he slipped on the ice and dropped his ipod in a puddle. For the most part though, the students I have spoken with had either not heard of it or heard of but didn’t know what it really was.

By: Reid

Reid — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:46:39 +0000

I go to the University of South Carolina (2nd semester sophomore) and this is completely true. The only reasons my friends have even heard of twitter is because I’m always on it although I don’t think they really understand what it is and all the ways it can be used still. In my Media Arts class last semester I was one of two students out of a class of 95 who had a twitter account and again, most had never heard of it.

By: sbimonline.com

sbimonline.com — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 03:13:38 +0000

Very interesting, although surprising that most of the students had not heard of twitter. I thought that was a big things amongst college students. I agree social networking is a two sided street although I have not seen much come of it (at least professionally). Most of my success has been through off line networking.

Blogging, at least for me, has been a better attractor of consulting opportunities and professional inquiries.

By: Jon Payne

Jon Payne — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 20:11:01 +0000

Rather shocking really… though actually this is the second time in the past week that I’ve heard of college kids having no clue what Twitter is.

By: T

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:33:50 +0000

Great article and the event sounds like it was very successful. I totally agree that most students are facebook focused. I recently graduated and that’s all I used. I now work in social media and wonder how I ever lived without twitter, google reader and blogging.