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Why do engineers seem to have a problem with twitter?
A recent survey by Karen Field for US-based website EETimes found that very few electronics design engineers felt that the social networking service was relevant to their day-to-day activities.
As a twitter user myself, this got me thinking. Is this a case of resistance to change, time pressures or is there something more specific.
Is the twitter feed so annoying to engineers because it has become hi-jacketed by corporate releases and website news feeds?
After a quick scan through a series if twitter groups it seems that media types, PRs and online enthusiasts are using twitter for what it was invented, that is social networking and discussion.
Albeit in the 140-character format.
So what’s in it for engineers?
The enthusiasts would claim there is a lot for engineers as long as they are looking in the right places.
It is true that you do shape your own ‘twitter universe’ as it were. You select would you follow and if the choice is good this can lead to a wider group of ‘like-minded’ tweeters.
That’s the theory. But in my experience you still have to wade through a lot of what seem to be promotional twitter feeds.
You have to spend almost as much time monitoring and managing your follower networks as making those all-important 140-character statements.
As an experiment, I dipped into my own follower-network which has been ‘shaped’ over the last 18 months to connect with people around the world with an interest in electronics design.
I have not quite 700 followers and I am following just 300 people, and so I must assume that I am connecting with a tiny fraction of the design industry. But even 700 people can be representative of what designers are using twitter for.
These are a few examples of what I read from my follower network in just a few minutes this morning.
“Cloud computing will drive server spend”
“Has anyone tried a Boris bike yet?”
“The sooner someone finds a way of stopping WP database/traffic errors and integrates it into core, the happier my blog reading will be.”
“Blogged: Steve Ballmer - Get me my tablets!! Apple is hard to swallow”
And… (my personal favourite)
“morning all”
This gives a very quick snapshot of the mix of IT-dominated media comment and personal observation which seems to be the diet of the twitter world I am seeing.
In defence of designers, it would have been a different assortment had I looked in the afternoon of early evening when the US wakes up.
It seems to me that more designers in the US are on twitter than their counterparts in Europe.
This in itself is interesting for Karen Field’s recent EE Times survey of 285 engineers in the US found that 85% had no interest in using twitter.
Twitter is “a ridiculous waste of time and electrons” was one comment.
My guess is that interest amongst European engineers is even lower.
So twitter has a lot of ground to make up if it is to become as relevant a networking tool for design engineers as it seems to be for PR account managers and Apple enthusiasts.