Last week News Biscuit wrote a spoof article about a man who almost killed himself because of his Twitter addiction. Despite the spoof, at its core lies the incontrovertible addictive nature of Twitter.

Last year countless businesses banned Facebook access due to interminable employee distraction. Why are social networks so addictive? And why aren’t brands benefiting?

Social networks are simply another social interaction, another way to communicate and procrastinate. Some people shun them stating that their mobile phones and email are sufficient tools to lead a ‘real’ life. Some people shunned mobile phones during their advent into the mainstream 10 years ago.  But as facebook aims to hit 200 million users by the end of 2009  and Twitter is set to explode beyond 7 million by March, those shunning them are increasingly left out. At a value of $250m, brands however simply cannot afford to shun Twitter anymore. Right? 

Since I started drafting this post several days ago, Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) has discussed Twitter on national TV with Jonathon Ross (@wossy) and has seen his followership double from 60,000 to 120,000. Chris Moyles (@chrisdjmoyles) was discussing Twitter this morning tweeting alongside Philip Schoffield (@schofe) and Andi Pieters (@xxandip). Moylesy had 1000 followers at 7am today, and now has 13,000 at 6pm. Plenty of blogs are ruminating about when Twitter will go mainstream. Arguably, with this coverage, it has. 

Tweeters aren’t simply users. They are creators. As with Facebook, they actually go to the site to express themselves. This can be surprisingly addictive. James Harkin, author of Cyburbia: The Dangerous Idea That’s Changing How We Live and Who We Are,  has delved into the dark psychological effects of social networks - or what he has dubbed Cyburbia. Harkin calls this intrinsic itch “an insatiable appetite for chatter with an extended network of electronic ties“.  He goes on to mention that our time online “is less about “social networking” than about an obsessive desire to see and be seen“. 

Meanwhile the folks over at discoverio want to leverage this ‘desire’ “to help you cut through all the noise to easily identify the most important people and content you should be paying attention to”. They have released a presentation to support the power of social networks with the startling title, Discovery is the new cocaine, going so far as to cite a Wall Street Journal article that claims that the consumption of new data “triggers a chemical reaction that makes us feel good”. Despite the fact that this sounds suspiciously like a cheap infommercial, there is a resounding truth that those of us bitten by the Twitter bug do come back for a reason: some form of self validation. Indeed Discoverio’s first project is Mr Tweet, a service which tunes into your Twitter account to automatically measures the size of your Twitter… ahem…  stature. I, for example measure up like so:

Facebook’s Live Feed, Twitter, and services made to agglomerate user activity such as FriendFeed are hugely popular because the internet is providing content that we really care about: information from our friends.  Consumers (whether out of choice or addiction or simple procrastination) are returning to social networks for their daily dose. Twitter is the ultimate pull/engagement media space, so brands really cannot afford to miss out.

Right….?

Maybe. 

Maybe not.

Despite what advertisers and agencies alike might think, perhaps not every media space should be invaded with brand promises.  Like Facebook, Twitter only supplies a service which allows its users to create the content, but unlike Facebook its users often substitute its simple interface for one of a plethora of 3rd party Twitter apps such as Tweetdeck or Tweetie. A Twitter user does not even need to go to twitter.com once subscribed. This is not a flaw but rather a clever way to extend the medium into new channels such as the iPhone. But as it does render twitter.com unreliable from a hits perspective, it means that an advertiser would be required to place branding within the tweets themselves as suggested here. A terrible idea that flies against the age of engagement to the detriment of marketing and the brand. However there are plenty of examples of brands that Tweet.  Brands already use Twitter as surrogate CRM: customer service desks or feedback boards. But as Mashable’s Drapeau suggests, is this just a poor excuse for something they should do alone? Brands just do not seem to be adding much to Twitter. The exceptions are those whose attributes lie in supplying information and opinion - media brands for which Twitter acts as an additional channel.

If brands are aiming to use more traditional advertising such as the Facebook or Google model, marketers need to consider whether Twitter even needs their dollars. Twitter users’ primary complaints are around outages and reliability. This is only set to become a bigger problem without further investment as its usership explodes into the mainstream. However, revenue doesn’t need to come from advertisers and Twitter doesn’t seem to be courting brands. Twitter co-founder Evan Williams raised $22m of private capital in 2006 to start the site and could continue along this path. Given the current economic crisis, Twitter is more likely to sell the user data it owns to companies to raise revenue. The most likely course though, is that it is bought by a brand which can add it as a service, as eBay did with Skype, or as MSN did with Hotmail in ‘98. Or, just as Evans sold Blogger to Google in ‘03. The owners have already reportedly turned down a $500m offer from Facebook’s Zuckerberg. Given that as with so many other 2.0 startups Twitter was not founded with monetizing purposes but as a simple internal comms channel, and may change hands without ever making any significant revenue from advertising, perhaps Twitter is not the right place for brands to get amongst their consumers.

Tags: addiction, discoverio, evan williams, facebook, friendfeed, google, hotmail, mr.tweet, msn, tweetdeck, tweetie, twitter, twitter addiction, zuckerberg