Twitter Is Toast
Posted on November 16th, 2009 in Uncategorized |
Basically.
Its users have dropped for the second consecutive month. And the only time people talk about it now is to mention how irritating it is. (Which it is.)
As CNBC’s Jim Goldman wrote on Friday November 13th,
Twitter runs the risk of devolving into another marketing tool by companies looking for what might seem like a cool way to speak to customers. But if that’s all it is, I’m not sure how many customers will be left to hear the message.
Reminds me of something someone else wrote on October 15th:
..which is the problem with Twitter: 98% of the people who actively use it are trying to sell you something. It’s like opening your (U.S.) mailbox and finding dozens of pieces of junk mail—every day. Quick: Can you think of anyone who Tweets who isn’t trying to sell something?
Oh! Wait. That was me.
At some point, Twitter will have to make money, or else it really will vanish.What will Ashton Kutcher do then?
7 Responses
11/16/2009 11:57 pm
May I politely point out that the difference between someone who tweets and someone who blogs is….word count? Ok, I hear you saying: “But on a blog there’s room to speak intelligently on a subject, whereas on twitter that’s impossible.” Well, first of all, the purposes are different: twitter essentially allows people to point people to information. Blogs allow people to actually comment on information in a substantive way. But why all the hatin here? I remember when many public intellectuals decried the emergence of blogs for all the same reasons you’re attacking twitter — including the supposed impossibility of making any money. Face it: you hate twitter, and you’re not really telling us why. Dude, where’s my car?
11/17/2009 3:17 am
I’m presuming you don’t use Twitter. I use Twitter everyday and I receive none of the spam or marketing type tweets you mention. For one simple reason: I don’t choose to follow that kind of Twitterer.
Twitter becomes what you to choose make it. For me it is a news aggregator, an IM service to keep in touch with friends, and a way of expanding my horizons.
. .
In addition to its newswire function, I have met, & communicate with regularly, many people whose paths I would never cross in my daily life, from a ex pop singer in Santa Barbara & the Chairman of a major NY ad agency, through to a lawyer in Belgium and a twenty something graphic designer in London. There are many more examples. We post links, learn from each other, ask questions, crack up laughing, rant about injustices. It’s like being at the best cocktail party in the world. And, unlike real world cocktail parties, not only is anyone is free to join in, but bores are rapidly left behind.
I actually met with one of the above mentioned twit people in Manhattan today for the first time and, as expected, we got on like a house on fire, which is hardly surprising since we have interesting conversations on line. As I wrote today elsewhere:
“Twitter requires an ability to distill thoughts into 140 characters. If the contraction still lets personality shine through, then that person is bound to be interesting in real life.” Twitter cuts through bores, pedants and solipsists like a hot knife through butter.
I have now met many of my Twitter correspondents in person, who with no expectations, have turned out to be charming, interesting people, with whom I have much more in common that many of my old friends. It’s an unforeseen, & little written about, side result of Twitter that friendships formed online are translating into real world friendships. After all, it is natural that if you make friends with people you’d want to meet them. (Twitter is no shadowy chatroom where people hide behind avatars and pseudonyms.)
The thing that intrigues me about Twitter is that people who use it regularly love it, the people who dis it continually don’t use and have no real experience of the site.
Like all forms of communications, Twitter rewards those who put time & effort into learning how to use it successfully.
11/17/2009 3:20 am
ps as a friend said recently, writing off Twitter for its brevity of expression would be like writing off haikus because they don’t come in stanzas
11/18/2009 10:07 am
Liberty, I am happy to accept that twitter is as culturally important as haiku.
11/18/2009 10:36 am
Sushi.
11/18/2009 5:22 pm
Woefully missing the point
11/18/2009 5:23 pm
Twitter is to blog as haiku is to poetry. And you don’t seem to have a problem with blogging?