Social Media: What Kind of Twit Are You? The 7 Different Types of Twitter Users
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Written By Noah Mallin | September 3, 2008 | Share This
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I’ve mentioned before how helpful it is to be married to someone who knows little about the world of search and social media and likes it that way. When I asked her if she wanted to try Chrome she looked at me with concern and said “Is that a street drug?” Similarly she has never really understood why anyone would use Twitter. Is it a message board? A blog? An instant messaging tool? A chatroom? The fact that I say “Yes” too all of the above doesn’t really help either. Twitter’s 140 character per-post limit is surprisingly flexible in conveying a whole host of different attitudes and personality types.
Twitter isn’t for everyone but those who use it have a variety of different approaches to the so-called micro-blogging platform. I’m heavily indebted to Reprise Media Social Media Analyst Miguel Cancino for helping me come to the conclusion that there at least 7 different types of Twitter user and identifying who they are:
1) The Twitibitionist
There are people on Twitter who feel that you absolutely must have every minute detail of every second of their existence in 140 character increments. From heating up cold pizza for lunch to Twitting from the ob/gyn exam room in the midst of an earthquake to sending tweet updates while giving birth these people just want to share and then share some more.
2) The Twitvertiser
This is the user who is mainly using Twitter to alert their followers to something they’ve done or somewhere they’re quoted elsewhere on the net. Twitvertisers also promote their offline activities too – the Twitterverse is their bulletin board.
3) The Twilete
This is the upper-crust elite of Twiiter, those people with the most followers and whose every 140 character utterance is met with an immediate response. These people are also known as the Twitterati, which Alltop has compiled into a helpful list and feed. Typically these are non-Twitter celebs in the SEO, social media, and tech world who have transferred their status to the Twitter world.
4) Nit-Twits
The opposite of the Twilete, Nit-Twits are people whose every tweet is met with an eye-roll or groan and the thought that it’s probably time to prune your Followed list.
5) Commuter Twitters
There is one person I know on Twitter who only posted for about an hour in the morning and again in the evening. How disciplined, I thought, until I realized that they were simply bored on their commute.
6) The Twitgruntled
These are the angry ravers of twitter who can barely contain their ire in 140 characters. Often they are ranting about their crappy laptop or some other such thing but the best subgroup of the Twitgruntled as Miguel pointed out, are the Self-Loathing Twitgruntled who spend most of their time tweeting about how much they hate Twitter.
7) Twitfugees
These are the folks who sign up, use Twitter for a week and then simply drift or run away.
I’m sure we’ve missed a few other Twitter types out there – leave a comment to let me know who we missed.
Topics: Just for Fun, Social Media |
“There is one person I know on Twitter who only posted for about an hour in the morning and again in the evening.”
haha. I like #ttwt too.
You missed one!
“The Twispamer” The one that makes their account and has 2000 friends and only 12 followers and have nothing, but links for tweets!
Now that you’ve identified the types of users, I understand them better.
What do you call those who tweet as they drive? This weekend, we saw a driver and passenger who were both text messaging! I wondered if they were on Twitter and going to become Twitcidents.
To Richard — Good addition, I’ve been followed by a few of those Twitspammers myself!
Dana - what would be really scary is if they were messaging each other. Maybe we should call them Stuntwits for their dangerous feat of operating heavy machinery under the influence of Twitter.
Great list. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I teach 5 classes, so my tweeting is quite limited — in that way, I guess I am a quasi-Commuter Twitter. (I am MUCH more prolific, 140 characters at a time, on the other days of the week.)
I can’t say I fit into any of these actually - I feel like there may be 4 more that need to be added!
@ Nick — I think we could easily add 4 more. I go back and forth between Twitvertising and being a Twitibitionist myself…