Twitterers: How old are you?

3/5 UPDATE: The average Twitter age is 37 with 150 responders.

I've been asking twitterers, people that microblog on Twitter.com, to tell me their age. The Twitterverse has been very patient as I've been asking "how old are you?" over and over on Twitter for the last 24 hours.

Why am I asking? Why are twitterers retweeting, aka reposting, the question to their Twitter followers/friends? It started yesterday afternoon.

I was in a qualitative research readout meeting. I, of course, can't give any research specifics as it's a closed project. Thanks for understanding.

We were discussing questions regarding online communications. I voiced my surprise that Twitter wasn't mentioned by any of the participants. The reply was something along the lines of "Twitter is for the young that it takes someone young to get it."

Having turned 40 this year and being an avid twitterer, I was a little taken aback by the youth comment, but heck, I didn't have any Twitter demographic stats. I posted a tweet about my surprise and my friend @kimdushinski responded:



So I posed the question, asked people to retweet it, kept posing it. And the ages rolled in.

Currently, the average Twitter age is 37 with 120 responders.

The youngest age reported so far is 14 and the oldest is 68.

Of course this is just an informal poll, with mostly my followers/friends responding. I know it's not scientific and it's self-reported, but my gut is telling me twitter's average age is in the mid-30s. Several twitterers that direct messaged me agree. Would love your thoughts @ev on twitter's average age.

And the unexpected benefit of asking a question to the twitterverse - new followers. What a wonderful surprise! Thanks to all my new friends for sharing your age with me and helping me out without knowing me. I'm looking forward to staying connected.

Thanks so much to all my Twitter friends that spread the word. A few that are top of mind are @warrenss, @chrisbrogan, @rickmurray, @jeffisageek, @conniereece, @creativesage, @pistachio and @linuxchic - I know I'm leaving out so many - Merci, merci, merci!

I'm going to continue to update the stat as more people send me their age. I'm not going to close the poll, there's no reason to, though I promise not to ask the question again :).

I'm keep you all posted through Twitter. I think we all are microblogging more than blogging these days anyway. More to come - thanks again!

Monologue blogging - yawn

Here's a few examples of monologuing:

1) Blogging without allowing comments. I'm really surprised at how often I come across a blog where comments aren't accepted. Not just corporate blogs but individuals.

2) Blogging, allowing comments, then not responding. So you don't join the conversation, you don't close the loop. You're dissin' your prospects, consumers, prosumers, colleagues, friends - your audience. This blatant sign of disrespect reminds me of the person behind the counter at a retail store that keeps answering the phone instead of waiting on the line of people wanting to actually buy something.

3) Microblogging - say twitter, for example - with lots of followers but following no one. So you are shouting out from your palpit - news your followers couldn't live without - but you aren't joining in on the conversation, you aren't experiencing the vibe to follow where the conversation is. You are interrupting. You are cutting into the fluid conversation and believe me, it's noticed and frowned upon.

4) Microblogging with lots of followers but only follow a few elite industry peers. You are again snubbing your customers. You can't engage if you don't know the pulse.

5) You have a profile on a Social Network Site but the only time you do anything with it is to accept a friend request or check the SNS email. Why are you wasting your time on it? Unless you are actively engaged you aren't going to experience the social aspects of the medium.

There's bloggers like me, we appear to be monologuing because, heck there's not that many comments on our blog. I don't take it personally - some of my posts are only relevant to me. Also, I know it's hard to move from a lurker to a commenter. It took my over 3 years to post my first blog comment, even after I had been a newsgroup junky in the '90s. Sigh, I think I'm just a lurker by nature.

I do know people are reading this blog. My proof? Well, I have Google Analytics so there's some traffic viewing posts. There are a few comments on the blog. Others reach out to me on twitter, facebook or email me directly. I'm very ok with that. I'm looking forward to more comments so the conversation on each topic continues. I guess my point is, I'm not trying to only monologue :).

I've talked with other novice bloggers and we're figuring it out the dialogue recipe as we go. The fact of the matter is we are all branching out. We are all actively engaged in microblogs and commenting on other's blogs. We are hooked in and enjoying being part of the conversation.

A microblogging friend asked me why I started my own blog. And given that laundry and school lunches call, that will be the topic of my next post.

Twitter - get it across in 140 characters or less

You ask a question on Twitter and you get a plethora of answers.

They are quick snippets refined to the gist of the point.

For instance, check out Chris Brogan's tweet from earlier this morning:



And look at the creative, across-the-board responses he got.

And critics say there's no conversation with Twitter. It's extremely interactive. Jump into the twitterati. Start by following me at zenaweist.

Lil'Grams - parent-style microblogging

Brian Solis blogged about the "twitter for parents" - Lil'Grams. The founder, Greg Narain, describes Lil'Grams as my memories, my way.

As a parent of 4 little ones, I'm looking forward to testing Lil'Grams, out because I need some place to brag and document about my kiddos that's easy to get to, shift through, and share. And can I tell you, I have all the scrapbooking supplies but do not have the time to keep up with all that. This looks promising, more later.