Some innovations have potential far beyond their initial applications. For example, consider the Internet in the 1980’s… it didn’t have much to offer to most of the population, but it was the infrastructure upon which the Web would grow. Other innovations may have their possibilities restricted by some fundamental limitation of the technology or infrastructure.
I can’t help thinking that Twitter is going to run into a spam problem that will limit its growth at something near its current use. My thinking goes something like the following. I would love for someone to show that I’m wrong, especially if they can identify particular misunderstandings or false assumptions in this logic:
a. Twitter use happens through direct following and text search.
b. Any viral or explosive use of Twitter is going to be based on text search (I think that’s how it’s happened so far, but I might be wrong).
c. Heavy use of twitter search encourages twitter spam which can easily limit the effective usefulness of a ny heavily used twitter search term.
d. The fundamental solutions to this kind of spam are follower-of-follower networks or richer tagging or import systems.
e. These kind of systems already exist with technical maturity and large user bases (such as the open blogosphere, Facebook, LinkedIn), so there’s not much reason for Twitter to be enhanced to compete with those.
f. What will survive is direct following, celebrity blogging, and limited open search among a “geek media” community.
The conclusion for me is that Twitter has created two significant things:
1. A community of users who are excited about communicating with each other over a new medium. In a sense Twitter is akin to a 1980’s era BBS. This community is significant in the lives of its members, in large part because of the members themselves have a shared interest in social technology.
2. A trendy platform for celebrity blogging. For now, Entertainment Tonight advertises its Twitter streams on the TV show, and it catches attention because Twitter is hot right now, but eventually the show’s staffers will microblog directly on etonline.com. Twitter doesn’t offer any long-term value to Entertainment Tonight, just short term value based on a trend and curiosity of its viewers.
Maybe twitter can be a long-term platform for celebrity blogging if it’s really better for celebrities to microblog on twitter.com slash something instead of their own domain, or even a rich platform like Facebook. But I just don’t see that happening.
I think we will look back at Twitter as an important era in the development of social media, and the community will have a big effect on many people’s lives for a few years.
4 responses so far ↓
Dylan Salisbury // March 23, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Karthik pointed out that I forgot about “live blogging” as one of its uses. Twitter has advantages over other live blogging platforms from both the sender’s and receivers’ points of view. It’s particularly good if you want to receive live updates on a mobile device, because receiving updates over SMS work so well.
Rob Nelson (guruvan) // April 20, 2009 at 1:02 am
Dylan, You hit the nail right on the head here. Twitter essentially offers no additional intrinsic value to its users. Once the fad of Twitter has passed, it will only survive as an entry platform to new microbloggers who cannot establish their own platform. Sites like identi.ca and Blellow are already increasing in popularity (since even you wrote this article), and the laconica platform will be in use soon at many sites like Entertainment Tonight. Microblogging sites of this nature will continue to be important a media of exchange while we still have active SMS users on the network – most other platforms do not support their use via text messaging.
The natural evolution is towards aggregation sites like FriendFeed. This site simply makes use of the microblogging sites as one set of the potential sources of data that can be aggregated and then pushed out to other sites.
What will survive is the asymmetrical model of Twitter (and clones) and FriendFeed. Facebook is probably on of the last in its class of symmetrical relationship sites.
The celebrities found Twitter this week, coming in on Oprah’s coattails. Then end is near ;)
Dylan Salisbury // April 20, 2009 at 7:50 am
I’m excited to hear you concur, Rob, because you’re somebody who has found a lot of personal value in using Twitter. But you will probably agree that it’s because you fit squarely into the Twitter community — just as I think we both fit into the 1980’s BBS communities :-)
Rob Nelson (guruvan) // April 20, 2009 at 8:15 am
Yes, I have found a lot of value in using Twitter. You certainly can’t discount it’s importance as an evolutionary step, and it’s not going to go away anytime soon. But as the Web gives way to the Web 2.0 technologies, those will soon give way to Web 3.0 technologies. But -The internet is built layer upon layer, and the old layers don’t go away. We just build new services that use them as a base. This is what will happen to Twitter. Eventually it will simply become another broadcast medium (it is already becoming this -most tweets are links, and not “status updates” or conversation) …If you want conversation you need to go to FriendFeed at this point. This is where I find the most value. But Twitter is a HUGE part of the activity there.
And I fit squarely into the “online conversation” community, as do you. It matters not at all the platform. What ever has the most and most valuable people on it will be my choice of medium.