Here's a great wake-up call from Alan Wolk to all you creative techie geeky types (present company included) who don't see past their own use and presence on Twitter (present company hopefully excluded).

What 'ThugLife' Can Teach Us About Twitter
This Ignored Demographic Shows What You Can Learn When You Look Beyond Social-Media Elites

While most in the social media bubble would have you believe that Twitter's output consists solely of links to "relevant articles," "breaking news stories," "unique insights" or retweets of all three (along with the occasional "what I'm having for dinner" tweet from the latest Asian-Fusion-locavore bistro) a look at Twitter's Trending Topics reveals otherwise

While the aforementioned geek patter is certainly in there, it's generally dwarfed on the trending topics list by tweets about Disney Channel stars the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus (put out, one can safely assume, by middle-school-aged females) and tweets from another demographic, 20-something African-Americans tweeting in what can best be described as ghetto slang.

And what's fascinating is a.) how large and active this demo is; b.) how much their notion of how to use Twitter differs from that of the tech and media crowd; and c.) how much the self-proclaimed "Twitterati" like to pretend they don't exist. The Twitterati -- the digital/tech/social media specialists who "discovered" Twitter back in 2007 -- will grudgingly debate the existence of tweens on Twitter, as if there were a real possibility that 31-year-old programmers in Palo Alto were tweeting endlessly about Miley Cyrus -- but I have yet to see any mention of this young African-American demo.

Read the full article on AdAge.