The study tracked development of Twitter from 2006 to 2009 and found that two major factors played into the micro-blogging platform’s adoption in the U.S.: geography and media coverage.

The Contagion Process

Calling this a ‘contagion process’ because of its similarity to how pathogens spread and assimilate in populations, the MIT researchers pinpointed Twitter’s early growth patterns.

The platform seemed to grow fastest in areas where it was adopted early and had close-quartered urban support to allow for real-world social networking to help it spread. In areas like New York City and Silicon Valley, it was adopted at rates many times higher than it was in other urban, but less connected areas like Austin, Texas and Salt Lake City, Utah.

This contagion-like process continued through the four years of the study’s focus. The more socially connected an area or group of users was, the faster Twitter use spread amongst them. Cyberspace is often closer to home than we realize.

This social networking, of course, includes celebrities and news media outlets.

The Media’s Role in Spreading the Twitter Disease

Rapid spikes in Twitter adoption were directly related to news coverage locally and regionally. When Ashton Kutcher challenged CNN to see who could get a million Twitter followers first, both accounts saw huge influxes of followers with Kutcher winning by only half an hour.

As the news coverage increased and became more common (and terms like ‘tweet’ and ‘follower’) became part of the nomenclature, the social network exploded in size.

The Study’s Conclusions

Rather than looking at the social network as a constant in terms of use, the MIT study focused on how it was used in terms of spikes and valleys of popularity. By doing this, they found many correlations between the happenings of a geographic area or demographic of people and Twitter’s usage trends.

Initially, Twitter grew fastest amongst the tech-savvy, younger users of Silicon Valley and New York City. It spread in this way to other tech centers around North America before gaining more widespread acceptance amongst everyday users.

Today, Twitter is virtually ubiquitous and most connected devices have either built-in or readily available apps to connect with the micro-blog’s system.

The MIT study can be found on MITnews

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The New Interface

It’s important to start with the interface changes, which are not insignificant. These changes are causing a rift amongst a few current Twitter users, but are by and large being accepted it appears. For those interested in Twitter as something other than a way to send out tweets about your latest exploits in whatever MMO you play, these changes are a great thing.

The changes have made the service accessible to just about anyone, no matter their tech savvy. Someone once said that once a technology can be dumbed down enough that even your grandmother can use it, it will find commercial success. Personally, I’ve known some pretty smart grandmas, but the theme of the phrase still holds: when anyone can use it easily, everyone will be able to use it.

That’s generally the first big hurdle for most new technology: becoming easy enough to use that everyone will be able to use it, thus making it mainstream. It’s also often what kills the service, since this very thing can cause a core crowd of users to start trash-talking it once it ‘sells out’ and find a new favourite service instead.

In Twitter’s case, I don’t think it will destroy it because Twitter’s core users are varied, spread out over market segments, and many are using it for business purposes.

The New Business Focus

Now that the social part of Twitter has upgraded for the better, the business side needed to do so as well. With the announcement of their new brand pages, Twitter has finally done that. The question here, though, is whether it’s too little, too late.

Facebook and Google+ both have brand pages. Both are doing very well and were met with a lot of acceptance, despite a few rocky rollout problems. Having a presence on Facebook is considered mandatory for business today and G+ is poised to become that way within a few months.

What about Twitter then? The problem here is that the business presence on Twitter is already very heavy. Most businesses have been using the micro-blog service for a year or more. All that changes now is that their landing page when someone clicks on their username will look more branded. Is this a big thing?

Yes and no. It’s a big thing for those businesses that rely on users falling on their anchor page and then clicking that ‘follow’ button. It’s no big deal to what appears to be the majority of Twitter business users, however, who rely more on friends of current followers seeing their messages and clicking the ‘follow’ button from a myriad of places – none of which are the company’s landing page on Twitter.

Should you build a Twitter brand page for your company? If you already have a Twitter account, then absolutely. You lose nothing by doing so. Should you expect it to greatly enhance your presence on Twitter? I wouldn’t count on that.

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Beyond all of this, though, once you get through the hype, those of us who use Facebook for both business and pleasure need to figure out how to keep our privacy intact. For this walk-through, it is assumed that you have taken precautions such as not publicizing your email address to the world at large, have not published your phone number, and don’t have your home address (complete with Google Maps link) published – and have otherwise taken the most common-sense precautions with your security.

General privacy settings to use.

To start with, there are some general ‘rule of thumb’ privacy settings to use. At the top-right of your Facebook page is a menu link labeled ‘Account.’ Click that and then choose ‘Privacy Settings’ off the list that appears.

A new page loads and here you’ll start with the simplest of settings: Personal Information and Posts. Click that and you’re presented with a new page, full of general selections accompanied by drop-down lists.

Set all of these to ‘only friends’ (even if the particular information in question isn’t actually on your Facebook page). This is probably the minimum in Facebook security settings, but it is often overlooked. Additionally, if you have a lot of ‘friends’ who aren’t really friends, then you might want to uncheck the ‘Friends can post on my Wall’ option.

Now choose the Photo Albums ‘Edit Settings’ button to change those defaults. This leads to a page that contains individual photos and/or photo albums (depending on how much you’ve uploaded so far). Select ‘only friends’ on the drop-downs for each album or photo unless you really want it shared with the public.

For instance, you might want your ‘Family’ and ‘Mobile Uploads’ photos made only for your friends’ consumption, but your ‘Seminar Presentation 2010′ album to be public as it’s part of your professional profile.

Now go back to the Privacy page (there is a link at the top-left from the Photo Albums privacy page).

Your contact information on Facebook should be minimal.

Finally, we come to the Contact Information page, which you’ll get to by clicking that link from the Privacy Settings menu. There are two important settings here to keep you from both being inundated with false friends leads (spam accounts) and random instant message contacts via Facebook or other places.

Set everything on the drop downs given to either ‘Only Friends’ or ‘Friends of Friends’ so that either only your friends can do that thing (IM, email, etc.) or only friends-of-friends can do it (add you as a friend), respectively.

Those are the most basic of Facebook privacy settings and will keep you out of most of your troubles. New changes such as many applications on Facebook requiring your email address are also important to note. A stringent rule of thumb is to stop using any Facebook app that requires you to give them your email in order to use it. That is an invitation to spam.

This should give you a good start towards retaining your privacy in social networking. Good luck!

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