With all the major news outlets plugging their twitter usernames, how long before twitter is the new myspace? Or is it already there?
I’ve found that it’s nothing but a bunch of noise. The moment you start following someone popular is the moment you’ve subscribed to the static channel.
Being a part of the mainstream may make twitter less cool but I’d hardly say it’s a negative for using it. If anything Twitter’s potential is increasing… although certainly harder to do and requires more selectivity.
tumblr is probably twitter’s most direct competitor.
The trend I’ve been seeing lately with younger users is that they seem to gravitate more to sharing services (like tumblr, instagram), rather than shout-out services (like twitter, facebook)
Either way, when a service breaks out of the tech enthusiast bubble and into the general public, there are going to be more people that eventually encounter it and start to use it.
There are pros and cons of everything.
I love twitter because its less cluttered as compared to facebook.
If something big happens immediately, it starts trending on twitter.
And 140 characters are much much better as compared to reading long stories/status on facebook.
Its popularity has not diminished over the years and a few mobile apps like Vine where users can create and post 6 seconds videos is running really hot now.
It is who you follow that makes a social network worthwhile. Although I noticed that a large number of influencers are starting to broadcast about almost everything that is related to their industry, I try my best to keep my tweet stream relevant so that it only contains high quality links or tweets. A well maintained tweet stream can be a useful source for news and high quality articles.
I think Twitter is here to stay. MySpace lost its glory because of Facebook and how much more control the user has with Facebook.
Actually, myspace was known for allowing users to go completely bananas on their profiles. It was facebook that was rather restrictive.
Part of facebook’s rise to power was due to the fact it was restrictive and exclusive.
Myspace later took a page out of facebook’s playbook and toned the “wild wild west of the web” theme down a bit, but the damage was already done. Today, people tend to join social networks because their friends are already there. Considering more people use facebook, people who have friends on facebook are more likely to join their friends there rather then try to start a new social circle on their own on another network, such as myspace.
Twitter is not only being integrated into thousands of websites and mobile apps, but its also being really integrated into our daily brick and mortar lives. Athletes, celebrities, commentators, Newscasters, even Professional Wrestlers are accessible. Twitter isnt going anywhere anytime soon.
Twitter can be all noise and nothing else is you have a wrong strategy. Some people really misuse it and I immediate unfollow those who do. Other than that, I’d have to agree with angelobe77, Twitter totally owns it when you need to share something quick.
Everything is possible even though Twitter is doing great and is well established in the social media.
I would expect Facebook to disappear long before Twitter does. Not that either of them os going to disappear any time soon.
Why would you say that?
Twitter provides a unique service that no one else provides.
Facebook is in competition with many other social media sites and while it is currently the most popular it would only need one of the others to produce a “must have” option for a significant number of people to switch across.
I would consider Twitter much more at risk by your logic. They provide what amounts to a short-form, public sharing tool… now that they idea is “out” it is by no means unique nor particular difficult in its self. Instead their advantage is the same as Facebook’s – insane scale.
Switching costs in social have far less to do with features than your network. This has been shown with the launch of all those other social sites: some have created nice niches, a few huge populations but neither network has been dethroned despite others having better features. If people don’t follow it doesn’t much matter if someone is “better”.
Twitter’s format also raises questions about revenue. They do seem to be making headway and are wise to keep the figures quiet but if the advertising community doesn’t get Facebook – with sizable text & image messages – you can bet Twitter confuses it even more.
So which ten other social sites would you see as the greatest threats to Twitter? I am unaware of any other site that has tried to take on the Twitter niche whereas I know of quite a few that are somewhat similar to Facebook - although generally not as confusing to use.
Twitter provides a means for sharing a message to others in mass and being able to respond back to it. That’s the core value proposition and on that basis it competes against Facebook, Google+, Path, App.net, Tumblr / microblogging and a whole host of others that did not or have yet to get very far. That’s not to say that these companies would identify Twitter as their target but rather that almost all major social services are centered around a similar idea: the feed.
The question however is their approach to it (Twitter pushed short lengths while Path uses actions) and how people chose to use them (Facebook never wanted to be particularly private, but the amount shared caused people to expect the option). Thus the biggest risk to Twitter is not so much a competitive service doing something a bit better as it is a change in the user and what they want.
Take instagram as an example: while you could call it limited (and I did not list it as a competitor for that reason), the response to a photo is generally many times that of a tweet, even a tweet with the same photo. By operating solely around visuals and by allowing one-way micro-interactions, Instagram caters to something Twitter thought they had themselves… It gave people a focused way to do photos.
In fact I’d argue that Twitter’s greatest strength is also the potential weakness: freedom. Facebook centers around a friends & family, Instagram around and interests and affinity but Twitter is really up to the user to define. This is what makes it so powerful but it also creates friction for the new user. This also extends into the power users vs lurkers dilemma but I’m already far enough off topic from your question.
As for Facebook, with over a billion users people may not love the system, the rules, or even the UI but they certainly seem to have figured them out just fine.
But I’m long on both.