Twitter’s golden age was around 2009, when Ashton Kutcher became the first user of the microblogging site to net 1 million followers.
All my friends had Twitter and spent sleepless nights sharing their thoughts with followers. I was mostly a lurker. After a few years, I became an active user and had my first encounter with cyberbullying. I shut down that account and made a new anonymous one where I am still mostly a lurker.
The Twitter-famous people I used to follow are not very active anymore. The local celebrities, except for a few, basically use Twitter to promote projects and endorsements. The Kardashians and Jenners, with gazillions of followers between them, are still active but really mostly for promotions and updates. There are times when they clap back at bashers, something I find is quite necessary.
For the most part, Twitter is more quiet than it was nearly a decade ago when everyone and anyone kind of migrated from Facebook. These days, everyone is still on Facebook. They are also on Instagram.
Of course, Twitter fights, mostly related to politics and show business, still take place once in a while. So many of the original Twitter users I know have been saying that Twitter is dead. But is it really?
As of October 2018, Omnicore Agency said Monthly Active Users (MAU) reached 326 million. That’s a lot, right? That, however, is a slight drop from the 330 million for the same period last year and the 335 million in the previous quarter. Around 80 percent of these users are on mobile.
Almost 80 percent of Twitter users are outside the United States. Of the total number of users, 46 percent are on Twitter daily. By user count, the top 3 countries outside the United States are Brazil (27.7 million users), Japan (25.9 million), and Mexico (23.5 million). So why are people on Twitter if some say it is dead or dying? As of October 2018, 46 percent said they were on Twitter daily for news.
I realized that although a lot of people I know and used to follow are not that active anymore, there are still many users and I’ve categorized them in the following:
- LURKERS. These are users who are on Twitter to get news updates and maybe even pick up some gossip. They follow news and entertainment sites. They never tweet but only retweet and like other tweets. Lurkers may be quiet on Twitter but they’re very updated.
- THE OPINIONATED. They’re not really trolls but people who have something to say about everyone and everything. They have a need to take on every issue. For the most part though, they’re harmless.
- THE WOKE. They’re the ones who are almost always politically correct. I follow many of these woke Twitter people basically to educate myself about things that matter.
- THE TROLLS. Some accounts have been created simply to troll targeted people/issues or to defend celebrities and other public figures. I look at trolls as people with a mission. That way, I don’t get annoyed.
- THE FANS. They’re on Twitter to support their idols and any hashtags related to their favorites’ projects. Fans can also attack anyone who they see as a threat to their idols but, again, that’s okay. That’s the nature of being a fan.
- THE FAME SEARCHER. Of all Twitter users, the fame searcher is, in my opinion, the most annoying. They plagiarize the tweets of others and repost pictures without giving proper credit to their rightful owners.
Annoying users notwithstanding, Twitter is an ecosystem and like any such community, we need to be respectful of each other’s beliefs and opinions.