andydidyk.com

Sometimes 140 characters are more than enough.

This is interesting.  Given my last post about Twitter and the like being the “junk food” of the social media world, a somewhat non-scientific survey done by OkCupid (an online dating site) shows that heavy users of Twitter have shorter relationships than non-Twitter users.  It’s not a statistically insignificant number either. Their sample size was 833,987 OkCupid customers.

OkCupid’s study showed two key things about Twitter users.  One, daily Twitter users tend to have shorter relationships, and two, the relationships get shorter as the person gets older.

Starting at 18 years old, there is approximately a two week shorter relationship to be had by the average daily Twitter user versus the “other people” (9 months vs 9.5 months, respectively).  The gap is somewhat narrower around age 40, and then takes a bigger dive around age 50, where the difference is almost two full months.

The easy analytical mistake would be to confuse correlation with causation, and say that Twitter has a negative impact on relationship length.  Not even close to enough information in that regard to make a conclusion.  Causation aside, if the goal of the average OkCupid user is to find a lifelong mate, than the correlation does indeed seem to be a negative one, which is what major news outlets have had a field day pointing out.

However, I have a subjective observation.  Most heavy Twitter users that I know tend to be very direct with their social media communications.  Sometimes “direct” can be a euphemism for “abrasive”, but it can also mean that those people that I know don’t mess around with how they feel about things.  This is of course a broad generalization and not reflective of any one individual in my social circles.  While I’d love to get my hands on some real data to support this theory, I wonder if those heavy Twitter users wouldn’t say that because of their directness, they are willing to end relationships a little sooner when they see that it’s not going to end well anyway.  When you live your life 140 characters at a time, brevity and directness are pretty important characteristics.  What do you think?

For the record, I am not a Twitter user.  I know that’s sacrilege in my industry.  I see it as a very valuable customer service tool for our clients, and a significant social phenomenon, but generally I prefer depth over frequency in my communications.  Let me know if I’ve got it wrong.

Finally, you can check out OkCupid’s full article if you want some of the more, ahem, salacious details from the rest of the survey.