IMO it's both, and both are very useful in their own ways.
Personally, I haven't noticed the gender aspects - I'd be interested to know what the average gender ratio of users on Twitter is, and how that compares to the ratio of people I follow.
Also, the data, from May 2009, is ancient from a Twitter perspective. It would be like reporting data on www usage from 1995.
This implies that Twitter's resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network.
Even in my own circle, I've seen this change a lot in the last 12 months; it's become a lot chattier. As others have pointed out above, it's a rapidly evolving service in terms of how people actually use it.
In my own biassed collection of Shiny People, I regularly see cross gender round table discussions on social issues and current events (perth twitterati), publishing (small press), feminism, general fannish stuff, and organising of social lives.
Of course, that may not generalise to wider usage; I'd be interested to see updated information to the gender stats, also with an acknowledgement that not all people fit the gender binary (as is the case for at least two of my followees). I should also collect some stats on my own followers' interactions, to see how badly my perceptions match the reality :)
It's certainly still the case that the majority of accounts created are never used, but I"m not sure I'd consider those to be users of the service. As to the evolution of my own little corner, while I once could filter out my noisiest 10% of tweeters and lose 90% of the traffic, it's more like 30/70 now; perhaps I'm just following a different blend of people.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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As a horrible no-good non-Twitter user this does rather reflect my perception.
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Personally, I haven't noticed the gender aspects - I'd be interested to know what the average gender ratio of users on Twitter is, and how that compares to the ratio of people I follow.
Also, the data, from May 2009, is ancient from a Twitter perspective. It would be like reporting data on www usage from 1995.
Prk.
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Or maybe it's the tone of their tweets?
< /sarcasm>
prk.
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< /sarcasm>
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< /sarcasm>
prk
:P
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Even in my own circle, I've seen this change a lot in the last 12 months; it's become a lot chattier. As others have pointed out above, it's a rapidly evolving service in terms of how people actually use it.
In my own biassed collection of Shiny People, I regularly see cross gender round table discussions on social issues and current events (perth twitterati), publishing (small press), feminism, general fannish stuff, and organising of social lives.
Of course, that may not generalise to wider usage; I'd be interested to see updated information to the gender stats, also with an acknowledgement that not all people fit the gender binary (as is the case for at least two of my followees). I should also collect some stats on my own followers' interactions, to see how badly my perceptions match the reality :)
It's certainly still the case that the majority of accounts created are never used, but I"m not sure I'd consider those to be users of the service. As to the evolution of my own little corner, while I once could filter out my noisiest 10% of tweeters and lose 90% of the traffic, it's more like 30/70 now; perhaps I'm just following a different blend of people.