Morgan Stanley intern disses Twitter, shakes up industry
By Andrew Heining | 07.13.09
What’d you do on your summer vacation when you were 15?
Summer camp? Swim team? Neglect your entire summer reading list till late August? Something tells me you didn’t write a report that rocked an entire industry. But that’s just what’s happened in England this week.
According to the Financial Times, 15-year old Matthew Robson, an intern at Morgan Stanley in London, was asked to write a report on his friends’ media habits. It was so good that the firm decided to publish it. The report caused quite a stir, generating five to six times the usual interest.
“We’ve had dozens and dozens of fund managers, and several CEOs, e-mailing and calling all day,” Morgan Stanley European media team leader Edward Hill-Wood told the paper.
What did young Mr. Robson have to say that got everyone so excited?
Twitter? Nope.
Most have signed up to the service, but then just leave it as they release [sic.] that they are not going to update it (mostly because texting twitter uses up credit, and they would rather text friends with that credit). In addition, they realise that no one is viewing their profile, so their ‘tweets’ are pointless.
Game consoles
The emergence of the Wii onto the market has created a plethora of girl gamers and younger (6+) gamers. The most common console is the Wii, then the Xbox 360 followed by the PS3. Most teenagers with a games console tend to game not in short bursts, but in long stints (upwards of an hour).
As consoles are now able to connect to the internet, voice chat is possible between users, which has had an impact on phone usage; one can speak for free over the console and so a teenager would be unwilling to pay to use a phone. PC gaming has little or no place in the teenage market.
Blackberry? iPhone? Yawn.
Mobile email is not used as teenagers have no need; they do not need to be connected to their inbox all the time as they don’t receive important emails. Teenagers do not use the internet features on their mobiles as it costs too much, and generally, if they waited an hour they could use their home internet and they are willing to wait as they don’t usually have anything urgent to do.
Phone books?
Teenagers never use real directories (hard copy catalogues such as yellow pages). This is because real directories contain listings for builders and florists, which are services that teenagers do not require. They also do not use services such as 118 118 because it is quite expensive and they can get the information for free on the internet, simply by typing it into Google
Robson’s comments on Twitter drew the most attention, because they come from a member of most tech companies’ target demographic, and stand in striking contrast to industry leaders’ prevailing opinion of the microblogging service.
Oh, and Robson’s take on newspapers? “No teenager that I know of regularly reads a newspaper…. The only newspapers that are read are tabloids and freesheets … mainly because of cost; teenagers are very reluctant to pay for a newspaper.”
Read the full text of Robson’s report here, courtesy of the Telegraph.
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Teenagers may not think it’s cool, but we’re on Twitter. Follow @csmhorizonsblog.
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2. David | 07.13.09
That comment on Twitter in the above article is similar to what I’ve been hearing a lot of in recent weeks. I’ve read several articles recently about how Twitter is NOT for teenagers. I sure a large part of it is for the reason stated above, that teens can already text their friends. Other reasons teens should be disinterested in Twitter may be the increasing frequency of people selling affiliate programs, pyramid schemes and porn. In addition businesses have the time and resources to solicit a large number of followers, ensuring that people will read their tweets. All these reasons among others make me agree with a lot of people that Twitter may be better suited for and of more value to businesses and not teenagers.
3. John Rasco | 07.13.09
I think the common thread here is that “teenagers are very reluctant to pay”…since the majority don’t have any income, this should not be big news to Morgan Stanley!
4. Brandon | 07.13.09
I don’t agree with the Twitter thing. Perhaps in Europe but in the USA, teenagers are all over Twitter. They like to text but the LOVE to Twitter as well. There are so many teens on Twitter that I feel weird using it. I am only in my twenties.
5. Rob | 07.13.09
Classic. When I first heard about Twitter I loved it. I loved it so much I made a Twitter Toolbar to tweet even more. Then, as time when on, I studied the behaviors of other Twitter users, and how they react to my posts. What did I find? They don’t read your tweets, and even if they do, they often miss it because the other people they follow push your updates down. So then I changed my Twitter Toolbar so it was easy to re-tweet your own stuff. What happened? People started downloading it like crazy. That girl was right on.
6. Alex Kaloostian | 07.13.09
Twitter’s only selling point right now is the ability to praise or condemn a company and get yourself heard- and even that will fade, and companies stop paying attention in a year or so, and hire the same off-shore, minimally-qualified staff to watch their tweets that they hire to answer their phone lines.
8. Megan Fox | 07.13.09
And its all true… a few months ago a report was released showing horrible retention rates for new Twitter users. Many never came back to the site mostly because they had nobody to interact with or talk to.
This insight by Matthew Robson is nothing really ground-breaking, most people who do proper Twitter demographic research will know that sites like Facebook and Youtube still continue to take up the bulk of teenager attention/time.
9. twitrounds | 07.14.09
I can see what he means by people getting tired of Twitter but the fact is that Twitter is growing rapidly. While some people will drop off many others will be their to take the place of a lost user. In the mean time those lost users will come back to the site because “everyone is on it”. It’s just a matter of time.
10. Andrew | 07.14.09
Man, interning at Morgan Stanley at 15! I wish I could have done that. A ticket to Yale that would have proven to be!
11. Emma Barker | 07.14.09
Wouldn’t it be interesting if we saw an influx of teens to twitter now they’ve read a report by another teenager about the fact they don’t use it?
On another note, I don’t buy that Matthew Robson doesn’t read newspapers. Most guys I know who’ve interned at investment banks claim to have come out of the womb reading the FT. Unless, of course, Master Robson got the placement through a friend of his banker father and would rather chase rainbows than the dollar for the rest of his existence…
12. Michael | 07.14.09
Funny thing, this technology. It seems to appeal to people by age group, not functionality. My teenage daughter uses Facebook and MySpace often. She’s used Twitter only once…the day she signed up. She doesn’t understand why it’s so popular and upon reading the article, I think I doubt that popularity among her peers. On the other hand, for folks my age (Baby Boomers), Twitter is more popular than Facebook or MySpace. I’ve deleted my Facebook account, as have many Baby Boomers, and rarely go to MySpace; when I do, it’s to see a new comment from my children to one of my (or their) photographs.
13. Mark | 07.14.09
Emma Barker, you’re missing the point; he wrote a report about teenagers, not himself.
14. dialogue1 | 07.15.09
I can’t say that I’m very surprised. I’m rather asking myself why suddenly a bunch of managers is making such a fuss - couldn’t they really have guessed, taking into account, that there are billions of dollars going into market research every year? Isn’t there one of them, who has kids of his own and recognizes their behaviour in what Mr. Robson said? I guess I could have told you the same things if asked - and I’m not even near the 15 anymore 
15. Kathyrn @OneMoreBite | 07.15.09
Actually, he said teens aren’t using Twitter because it costs them to update (I assume via texting on their phones), yet he also disses Blackberry & iPhone saying kids don’t need data plans (assuming primarily used for email). I doubt a 15-yr-old intern at Morgan Stanley understands or truly represents a “regular kid,” yet in true “suits” fashion, they assume his opinions are gold.
Don’t forget thousands of kids with parents happy to pay for data plans giving access to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc, fun and free (to the kid anyway). Once a teen sees how easy to amuse & attract friends by posting links on Twitter to the absurd & amusing (especially when they taste power of a retweet), well, me thinks they’d be hooked.
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1. Adam | 07.13.09
It had been known for sometime that Twitter wasn’t popular with teens — it’s just gaining notice now due to it being said by an actual teenager. This will certainly make some reassess the exorbitant valuations of the company.
Adam
http://www.twitterbacklash.com