Comments on: Would Teen Readers Twitter For ‘Twilight’?

By: Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources - Covering Comic Book News and Entertainment » Slash Print | Following the digital evolution

Thu, 07 May 2009 15:08:04 +0000

[...] media | Ypulse, a teen marketing blog, wonders if teens would follow Twitter feeds for characters from young adult novels. Apparently teens haven’t embraced Twitter (which surprises me … I figured they’d [...]

By: Kristen O

Kristen O — Mon, 04 May 2009 18:22:40 +0000

My thought on the Nielsen report on Twitter is that they’re using pretty careless methods to create their stats – and to be honest, I wish someone would call them on it. For one thing, look at how the numbers add up in their age bracket. They’ve assigned 11.7% to age group 18-24 (the other groups add up to 88.3%) while admitting that their sample size is too small for that age group to be considered conclusive evidence! This actually invalidates all of their other statistics, because if they can assign over ten percent of users to an age group but can’t get enough of that age group to respond to consider the statistic valid – they can’t assign percentages to the other groups! Not to mention which if they can assign that much without getting enough of that demographic to participate, their methods of gathering data/participants are tremendously flawed. I find it most curious that they have failed to publish the means by which they arrived at such numbers.

By: Micol Ostow

Micol Ostow — Sat, 02 May 2009 12:14:09 +0000

I completely agree with you Meredith, and I know it’s something the publishing industry has its eye on, as well. My editors (FlirtyGirl Productions) have made a cottage industry of imagining the possibilities of multimedia, multi-platform reading experiences and their vision really awes me.

Thanks again for the mention!

By: meredith

meredith — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:36:32 +0000

Thanks for all the comments. Lesson learned re: Twilight.

I want to repeat that I think there is still a lot of territory for authors of non-blockbusters to explore on the site (Micol is a prime example of a forerunner). While Twilight/Stephenie Meyer’s loyal following might be all about using the site for their fiction-related needs, I don’t think this is the case for teen readers across the board.

Finally, I would argue that while some teens may indeed be on Twitter (and they’re the ones that would be the most vocal about it), it still has a way to go to becoming mainstream with the age group (what I meant by “on board”). This recent Nielsen survey has the under 17 crowd composing 3.6% of Twitter users. http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/twitters-tweet-smell-of-success

By: Micol Ostow

Micol Ostow — Fri, 01 May 2009 13:45:00 +0000

Hey–thanks for the shout-out! It’s definitely true as Kristen says that authors are more and more using Twitter as a platform to help readers communicate with their characters, but what I personally love about Bradford is the way that the Tweets are meant as more than “just” marketing for the book–The Twitter feeds, combined with the blogs and the email accounts and websites really make Bradford a unique, immersive experience for readers (and for me!). It’ll be interesting to see, as the books are out for longer, how teen readers (who are indeed finding us on Twitter) respond to the Bradford-verse. :)

By: Shelly L

Shelly L — Fri, 01 May 2009 04:14:44 +0000

I know I’m trying to find the real Twilight men and women. I’m 15 and I created a Twitter JUST to follow them.

By: Laura

Laura — Fri, 01 May 2009 02:27:45 +0000

You’re kidding right?

There are over 29,000 (mostly teens) who got suckered into following a fake Stephenie Meyer twitter account, every major twilight fansite has a twitter,rising author Kaleb Nation (AKA tthe Twilight Guy) reaches 1,000′s (mostly girls) on Twitter.

I can’t imagine who thinks teens don’t Twitter.

By: meredith

meredith — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:49:55 +0000

Hi Kristen. Thanks for opening my eyes about Twilight and Twitter. I still think there’s a lot of Twitter literary territory to explore with non-blockbusters, but it’s exciting to hear that the teens who are on there have started to embrace the site as a creative outlet. I’m definitely looking forward to see what comes next in that space.

By: Kristen O

Kristen O — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:06:29 +0000

They’re already doing it. There’s about four or five sets of them doing full character families. How did you miss this???

The Twilighters are ALL OVER Twitter. The research that teens don’t twitter at all is erroneous. I’m following hundreds – and that’s without making much effort to find them.

The reason the Twilighters are on Twitter is because most of their fan sites are, plus actors Jamie Bower and Michael Sheen are confirmed to be on it.

The news stories aren’t really going to hit on this until late June, though, so congrats on at least asking the question first. :)