No doubt the use case involving brand/celeb following is less interactive; but at some level it must create a sense of proximity to celebs, even if they don't talk one to one with their followers.

The more twitter is integrated with sites and social networks, too, the more it's going to become a pipeline. It'll then be up to those sites to aggregate feeds and help filter tweets so that users get what's most relevant to them.

There will probably be a high churn rate among new users who expected to get access to celebs on twitter, as Liz points out. No doubt about that. But it's hard to know what people feel and take away from reading and following celebs on twitter. The fact that few interact with them directly doesn't necessarily mean it's failing as a medium. With changes in access and proximity (through tools like twitter), come changes in our expectations, too. I think most people figure that out pretty quickly -- it's then up to them if it's still interesting.

Thanks for the interview!

Thanks for the interesting article.

My first impression from Liz's mannerisms is she was judging you as just a pretty face, she seemed like she had not a clue of your tech smarts... Don't ever let 'em doubt your tech smarts!

My second thought is that Liz is expressing the same about twitter, and for good reason! It's tempting to think Twitter's beauty is superficial and only skin deep! Yet twitter has far greater depth / potential than Liz is willing to see, right?

It'd be great if you could get all smart and uppity / challenging of the people you interview. As why not try and rattle Liz a little about her lack of passion and obvious disdain for what Twitter is or can be?

How about really messing with the people you interview, as in really getting 'em to show a variety of emotions? How about being overly-intelligent, irreverent, spastic, sublime, overly-valuing and easiely riled up?

Most of all just be yourself, but for the love of tech, please stop acting so pleasant. You got the pleasant, polite agreeable part down perfect.

Boring!

Why not break out of that mold and expand your horizons? Why not add more of that which is unexpected, more like an improvisational performance that makes more candid, more creative answerings of your interviewings.

Be well, Deane

As it turns out, I recently compared the demographics of Twitter users to that of other SN's and social bookmarking/information sites. The results are at: nmc.itdevworks.com.

You readers may also find Themos Kalafatis' data-mining work both related and of interest. I'm fascinated by his findings: http://lifeanalytics.blogspot.com/

Geez.

Liz is awesome and treated me with the utmost respect. She gave a fantastic interview and worked very hard to be knowledgeable about this topic.

As for my video work, I'm aware that everyone wants to see something entertaining, but I'm not going to be confrontational just for confrontation's sake. Also, I think it's unfair to ambush one's subjects. I've been a journalist and interviewer for about ten years at this point; I can tell you that the only fair, right way to "shake up" a subject in a way that gives your publication credibility and maintains trust with the public and the source is to write a well-researched, thorough text-based piece. Outside of sensationalist network news and Michael Moore documentaries, getting up in someone's grill out of the blue on video is just not a good idea.

Clearly, Deane knows little about social scientists and their passion for their studies. Most of us devote our lives to specialising in a few niches - and when we find something new, as Liz has, we then spend more years watching, studying, questioning and THINKING about it that most people would ever imagine.

I found it very interesting that the bods who run Twitter are trying to actively suggest that it isn't a social networking site. This is where participant observation (one of the research methods Liz used) come in handy to confirm people's actual behaviour (i.e. use of Twitter) compared to the the 'big picture' corporate vision of Twitter.

Again, thanks so much for sharing this interview with us.

The comment by Deane was just a weird, I didn't get any of those vibes at all.

A social scientist's take about Twitter and on video. Great one! RWW (the audio needs improvement though...)

Keep it up RWW!