The evolutionary lifespan of any new communication or publishing product follows a typical pattern. First, the product is introduced to fanfare or lack thereof. Second, early adopters adopt the product and begin evangelizing it as a revolution. Third, the mainstream takes notice of the new product, but complains loudly about how they don’t get it. Fourth, someone or something bridges the cap and the mainstream adopts the product, but take a long time to really learn it. And fifth, the early adopters complain about what happened when the mainstream moved in and move on to the new thing.
With Twitter we’re at the point where the mainstream has adopted the product, but not quite gotten it. The news that 80% of users have less than 10 followers and almost 40% of users have never tweeted means that people are dipping their toe in the water, but are still getting used to it. This isn’t surprising considering what happened with blogs when people went from wondering why you would need a blog to signing up for a Livejournal or Blogspot account and never posting. I can personally attest to both of these: I’ve had a blog in some form for about six years, but haven’t posted this regularly for this long before. And I’ve had a Twitter account since late 2006, but wasn’t posting regularly until 2008.
But Twitter continues to gain steam and if the founders figure out how to make money and not screw it up by adding too much functionality (I’m looking at you, Pownce), it will be around a long time. But right now, it’s a highly useful tool for students, which is why I’m always curious when I see the stat that only 22% of 19-24 year-olds have a Twitter account. But that will likely change sooner rather than later. And law students can get a lot of use out of Twitter right now, enough so that every 1L should have an account. Use it for Screaming We’ve all heard of the “finals yell” before. That blood curdling scream you hear in college dorms, student ghettos, and libraries around exam time that’s equal parts fear, frustration, loneliness, and exhaustion. Well in law school, you’ll probably be tempted to unleash that yell during times other than finals. And Twitter is a great place to shout about law school without pissing off everyone who wants to study. 140 quick characters ending with the hashtag “#fml” is a lot quicker and gets a lot more reassuring responses than a 25 word blog post.
Use it to plan things If you have a group of say 20 people and you want to get as many of them as possible to the same bar on a Friday night and it’s Friday afternoon, which is easier: sending a bunch of IMs, texts or phone calls, or jumping on Twitter and announcing it a couple times? Well, unless you and your friends have a phone tree like a youth soccer team (and I know what you’re thinking and the answer is no, I didn’t have this in law school. It was high school), then arranging it via Twitter is going to be easier. Plus with a few retweets among your law school friends, that tweetup could easily take over a small bar.
Use it to expand your support group Building a support group in law school can be the difference between great and relatively stress-free success and hair-on-fire failure. I’m not talking about a study group, I’m talking about the people that you might (or might not) study with and you might (or might not) hang out with outside of law school, but you know absolutely have your back when you need a hand in law school. Twitter can build the core of that group, but it can build the outer rings, of people who might or probably will help you if you need it. And it allows this group to expand outside of people who go to your law school. (BTW, expect more on this topic in the coming months)
So head over to Twitter and sign up for an account. Add a photo, write a bio, and write a couple of tweets. Then start following people. Use search.twitter.com and look for law school, or the #lawschool hashtag. And then follow me. I’ll follow back (especially if you did all that in order and I can tell you’re a real person). And tomorrow’s review will be on three Twitter clients, two iPhone, one Mac.
In this post: On Twitter, Most People Are Sheep [TechCrunch] Millenials Among Those Who Don’t Appreciate Twitter [Mediapost Publications]
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