I think there’s a misconception among people who don’t use Twitter as to what you actually do with Twitter (I was one of those people until recently).  I have this discussion related to social media quite a bit.  My personal theory is that Myspace ruined the party (temporarily) in attracting new users to social media because Myspace was so over the top and in your face.  But Facebook is much more reserved I think, and Twitter doesn’t even fit in the same category with Myspace or Facebook.  I know the whole 140 character limit makes it difficult for some people to get behind Twitter because it seems that anything that can fit in 140 characters would have to be trivial.

The quote below was in the comment section of a Mashable item that asked why young people don’t use Twitter:

Twitter is not good for closed-group socialising between known friends, which is what many young people like.
It *is* good for self-promotion, resource sharing and stranger socialising - which all lend themselves to business.

So there’s one misconception down.  Old people do not need to worry that Twitter is full of young people.  I think the commenter gets it right on.  Twitter is much more of a business platform.  And I think it provides an answer to a question I posed a few months ago about LinkedIn and whether it could be a really great business social site.  I won’t hold my breath waiting for LinkedIn to break out because I think Twitter solves the business social problem much better.

Traffic Stats for LinkedIn and Twitter

Here are a few key points I see:

• Twitter defaults to let anybody find you.  LinkedIn requires that you request connections and that you know somebody (I know their controls on this are poor and it doesn’t actually require that you know them).  If you’re trying to grow your online connections, you have to do it quickly in a way that doesn’t interfere with your day job.  Twitter’s default to let anybody follow you makes this easier than LinkedIn.  Also, in time I think the suggestion engines for suggesting connections will also get much better and that will lead to increased use.  If I follow an engineer, an investor, and another broker, and they all have a common connection, then some service should suggest that connection to me (there are third parties that currently do something like this, but really the Twitter user base needs to grow in order for this to work well).
• By limiting to 140 character posts, Twitter fits with the time constraints that most professionals have.  I think there would be a lot of people who might be skeptical of Twitter’s 140 character limit that you could ask the rhetorical question: Do you have a lot of spare time to be writing messages longer than 140 characters?
• LinkedIn is basically an online resume with really bad social features attached to it.  So in terms of being a social site, they got the key part wrong.  Having an online resume is a really simple thing that doesn’t require a behemoth the size of LinkedIn be built around it.  More important is to get the networking/social part right.  Twitter is light years ahead of LinkedIn in this regard.
• Everybody I know sends around emails with links to news articles and other industry items of interest.  These are perfect fodder for tweets.  You don’t have to come up with anything profound, but over time you send your followers a message about who you are (in tiny little drips).  Business is about relationships, and yet LinkedIn does not give you any real insight into who people are.  This blog has been a great platform for me to connect with other professionals, and yet I know I am rare in being willing to regularly write 700 words on an issue.  Twitter levels the playing field and opens it up for more participants to be able to get something about themselves out into the world.
• Twitter has opened up their platform to outside developers through the API.  This is a simple evolutionary play.  It allows Twitter to benefit from accelerated innovation.  They know that outside developers will think of services that they didn’t think of internal.  LinkedIn is still trying to figure this out.

I am not one of these people that picks up every new thing that comes along and proclaims it to be the future of business (see my criticisms of LinkedIn, Loopnet, Costar).  But I am sufficiently impressed by the potential that Twitter has for business users.  There are still a lot of ways that the service could be improved, but I have a lot more confidence in Twitter to solve the problems than LinkedIn.

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