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Yonkers Twitter Maven Weighs In On Social Media Quizzes

YONKERS, N.Y. -- If you open up your Facebook homepage, you might see something a little different among the selfies and status updates. 

Photo Credit: Screenshot

Along with periodic updates of where a person is or what they're up to, you'll also see quiz results proudly stating what color they are, which 90's cartoon character they should be and how many classic Disney movies they've seen.

Personality quizzes have soared in popularity on social media within the last year. According to the Chicago Tribune, BuzzFeed's "What City Should You Actually Live In?" quiz from January received upwards of 20 million views. Additionally, The New York Times' "How Y'all, Youse and You Guys Talk" dialect quiz, published Dec. 21, garnered the most online visits of anything posted on the newspaper's website in 2013.

To those who have tried to tackle the new and elusive business of social media marketing, these quizzes might be seen as an unexpected cash cow. But, for the rest of us, are these colorful quizzes a colossal waste of time?

According to Dylan Sanders -- a 23-year-old Yonkers native who is, in part, responsible for the hit Twitter account, "College Problems," -- they are a great way to waste time.

The Twitter account, which Sanders runs with a few close friends, sports more than 150,000 followers and countless more retweets. Its 140 word accounts of the trials and tribulations of college life soared into popularity while Sanders and his friends were still in college. 

After most of the group had graduated from college, Sanders and his friends launched a care package service in an attempt to create something larger out of the account's success.

"Social media for college students is all about procrastination," he said. "We took advantage of that. We would find peak hours when students were mostly likely to procrastinate. After 11 p.m. is when we'd be most successful."

He said that while Internet quizzes are nothing new, sites like Buzzfeed have found a way to make them popular and interesting.

"They are doing something right, I just don't know what it is. It's a completely unoriginal idea, but it happened to click for them. That's the trick with these things, you have to make it click," he said. 

Sanders added that despite it's distracting quality, social media can be beneficial when used appropriately.

"If you're using it as a distraction, it might not be beneficial at times," he said.  "However, I use Twitter for news and follow a number of outlets online. The younger generation gets their news online."

He said that Twitter caters to members of his generation, who want instant gratification.

"We don't have the attention span for anything else," he said. 

@suzannesamin

ssamin@dailyvoice.com

 

 

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