Reading “Can Twitter Be Saved”
08.24.09
Last week on Facebook, I posted a link to an article entitled, “Can Twitter Be Saved”. One of my friends, Becky Carlson, posted the following comment:
“I read it too — what are your thoughts??? I’d like to know what our local SM guru thinks?”
I don’t necessarily think of myself as a “guru”, but felt the obvious need to reply to her query, after which, I didn’t think anymore about it.
Until…
Another friend of mine, Tim Moore, read the response and quickly berated me on not having posted the information to my blog. Always willing to accept critique from the wise – I have now posted my response for your review.
(Here is the link to the article in question – http://bit.ly/ywYef)
My response:
I don’t think Twitter is in danger of an immanent crumbling. Have they had capability issues as the number of users increases? Yes. Do they keep making improvements? Yes.
I don’t agree with his thought about using “bots” to push more interesting feeds to the top. Isn’t it my prerogative to choose which feeds I deem as important? I can always unfollow anyone that doesn’t fit the mold that I’ve chosen for myself.
On the other hand, I think it’s naive to think that any platform is failproof. Remember Alta Vista? Who thought that would go away? It was a powerhouse! What about Geocities, Friendster and now MySpace? It’s dangerous to get too attached to one platform…just as in finances, you should invest in numerous options to ensure the security of your funds…in social media, you should utilize different platforms to ensure the credibility and visibility of your brand.
My 2 cents.
I would love to get your thoughts! What do you think about the “imminent” failure of Twitter or of my response?
Deidre Hughey
If you enjoyed this post, you may enjoy these:
Twitter Research and Harvard Business School
What’s Twitter About Anyway?
Why Are You Trying to Get Followers on Twitter?
Twitter isn’t failing, I’m not sure why people say that. Twitter is thriving. When they roll out TwitterPro (or whatever they are going to call it) I think their stability problems will either be a thing of the past, or it will be their death kneel.
The idea of mining data from the Twitter feed is brilliant – unless you can’t get the data you’re paying for because of some internal problem.
If Twitter goes away, there will be another contender ready to fill the micro-blogging vacuum. Once people get used to something like Twitter, they don’t just stop because the original vendor disappears (see AltaVista refrence above).
If I had a chance to invest in Twitter today, I would pony up whatever I could. Would you?
Thanks for the comment, Phil! Absolutely, Twitter is not failing and that’s exactly why I thought it was important to write the post. At the same time, putting all of our eggs in one basket isn’t the best idea either.
Do I love using Twitter? YES! Would I “pony up” to invest, if I could? You betcha!
Thanks again for your insights.
Thanks for the comment, Phil! Absolutely, Twitter is not failing and that’s exactly why I thought it was important to write the post. At the same time, putting all of our eggs in one basket isn’t the best idea either.
Do I love using Twitter? YES! Would I “pony up” to invest, if I could? You betcha!
Thanks again for your insights.;