Twitter isn't a product, it's a service. One that might be before it's time (and that's not necessarily a compliment). If people have a huge amount of followers those followers are going to be portable.
I like Twitter, and I think they're probably doing everything they can. The bottom line is, like say Tivo, it's a service that can be replicated. There's nothing so sensational about Twitter that it can't be overcome by another similar (more reliable) service.
Wizeguyztees
· 1 year ago
There is almost too many things to try to keep up with in my opinion that you either have to pick your two favorite and run full steem ahead or be very average with all of them. From Twitter, to myspace, to facebook, to stumble, to digg, u have to invite friends with each one and who has time to be that social anyway. I wish I got paid to blog.
Greg Hollingsworth
· 1 year ago
Very true, Twitter is a service that can be replicated. And actually, TIVO is a replicant (ReplayTV was around first, it just never really caught on).
The issue isn't that no one can do it better (although up to this point no one really has), it's that rebuilding a community from scratch is an arduous process that can take a lot of time. I for one wouldn't want to start over (and I only have about 530 followers).
khylek
· 1 year ago
That's the comment argument, and you may be right. But with so many other ways to be connected (Facebook, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, etc) I would think that if you had an audience that listened, you'd take most of them with you.
Saying that, I have 165 followers (not 530 like you, or the thousands that others do), and I'm not intending to build an audience strictly for business reasons.
Greg Hollingsworth
· 1 year ago
I am certainly not trying to build a following for business reasons, and yes, you're right, someone who has an audience should be able to take them a long for the ride.
Unfortunately, with Twitter (and the auto-follow bullshit) there is no real way of knowing just how much your audience is listening. Now, if you're a new media celebrity (e.g. Scoble, Chris Brogan, Leo Laporte, etc...) you could probably take an audience with you, but most of us use twitter for conversation, not explicitly to increase our personal brand.
Sometimes it may be a little of both (and you have at least one more follower know), but even 530 is a paltry number considering the 1 million+ users of Twitter.
sbspalding
· 1 year ago
I think there is something to be said about building an audience for its own sake. Generally, I find that Twitter works "better" for certain things when you have a larger following (as long as your following back, of course).
I've "eavesdropped" on tons of great conversations that I would have completely missed had I strictly friended people that I knew.
I guess it all boils down to motivation.
Mark Trapp
· 1 year ago
To invest so much into something through evangelizing and usage adds a huge amount of expectation. When it doesn't live up to your expectations, you're upset: you feel like you've been betrayed or cheated. Think about it in the offline world: what upsets you more, when someone you don't know does something you don't like, or when someone you really like and admire and look up to does something you don't like?
I think it speaks to the value of Twitter that so many people get this upset when Twitter has problems. People are going to be vocal about their displeasure with Twitter, but they are definitely invested in it more so than many other services. The trick is for Twitter not to squander that by repeatedly abusing that investment from its users.
sbspalding
· 1 year ago
That much I agree with. I think the entire "Hype cycle" rubs me a little wrong. If impossible to meet expectations weren't hoisted on Twitter, than the disappointment people are now feeling could be mitigated.
Still not completely sure, but I think that's what I find troubling about the witch burning.
I completely agree with your last paragraph though. If people didn't care, they wouldn't say a word.
charlieanzman
· 1 year ago
Greg - As evidenced by lots of folks still there right now, Twitter still has legs .. IF they fix it. They're slowly making the move they needed (PR?!), now it's time to fix it (not to mention monetize it?). If they can pull this together quickly, Twitter will began to be noticed by other demographic groups (that never even heard of it??) and co-exist with Friendfeed (which is DIFFERENT).
Greg Hollingsworth
· 1 year ago
I agree completely, Twitter definitely has legs. I think that @jack and @biz have done a fairly good job of communicating during the recent troubles.
I also agree that Friendfeed is a different beast altogether, and to be honest, I greatly prefer Twitter.
But even just this morning, word is moving around Twitter (when I can get updates through Twhirl) about Plurk (which is useless to me as it won't render it's timeline in Firefox) as a possible alternative.
dan90266
· 1 year ago
Twitter needs to bring their API under control. In the video with Scoble they acknowledged that they are playing it too loose. Think about the bazillion API calls they must be getting every second. It's a horrifying level of activity.
sbspalding
· 1 year ago
I bet they had no idea what they were signing up for when they went live. They are now paying for that particular lack of foresight.
CyndyA
· 1 year ago
It isn't so much abandoning a favored child during a rough patch as forgetting about it. I've never been able to get used to reading via Twhirl, so I generally read via IM and reply via Twhirl (I know, it's weird, but it works for me). The lack of IM usually means I would try to catch up on the web site, but then the pagination was gone, so I lost everything. You get out of the habit of using it, and that time gets spent on something else, and then it's just gone. Sort of like why some tv shows lose loyal audience members when they change nights: loyalty is partially based on habits.
ophelia_chong
· 1 year ago
I am a patient person, and I understand that nothing pops out of the box perfect. I will not give up twitter for another flavor, because I have already built a community there, and to rebuild it piece meal somewhere else is too time consuming (and annoying). If we judged ourselves the same way some users are judging twitter, we would be in trouble. I make mistakes, forget things, over extend myself, veer off track, but those idiosyncrasies make me human. Twitter was an idea born of humans, so it's going to have those human qualities.
Nurturing is how great ideas are brought to fruition. We need to remember this when we interact with the world.
sbspalding
· 1 year ago
That's how I see it. It's wearying moving from community to community, and it troubles me that so many people are OK with stringing up Twitter for what amounts to growing pains.
Hopefully it's just a slow news week and public sentiment turns around again.
Miles
· 1 year ago
I don't think everyone should run for the exits at the FIRST sign of trouble, but there comes a point when it becomes apparent that the company has "lost its way". We see it all the time, companies who become so large that they lose touch with their customer base... it almost always starts with a lack of communication. I don't think Twitter is there yet, I still have high hopes for it, but they could be heading in the wrong direction.
Jeffro2pt0
· 1 year ago
Nope, I don't think people should run to the hills nor do I think they will. Too many people have worked hard to build up their followers and I doubt most of them would think about moving to a different service where they would have to start over. One thing Twitter has on some of the competition is that is offers an independent service to use. FriendFeed, Jaiku and some of the other ones are mere content aggregators. If the notion of being opened changed, and services started closed their doors with their API's, FriendFeed and those other aggegration services would die off because they are riding on the backs of all of the other services that are out their.
I think people are so fickle over Twitter because it's a service that so many people love to use and it's a service that so many people probably depend on now. Also, to the normal end user, it's frustrating to think that a service which handles the broadcasting of 140 characters or less messages has so many problems. I would think that what they are doing would be simple, but apparently it's not.
It's also interesting to note that Twitter was developed to allow people to answer the question, "What are you doing right now?" Instead, people are using Twitter as a global instant messaging service which is way out of line as to the way Twitter was supposed to work. It would appear to me that Twitter may have to completely revamp the service in order to align themselves with the way the majority of us use their service.
sbspalding
· 1 year ago
Couldn't have said it better myself. Excellent points.
Maggy Young
· 1 year ago
A comparatively young site has smply become a victim of its own good fortune. "Lack of foresight" is maybe an unfair comment too Steve, Twitters's take-on has been exceptional. They have also become victims of incressing expectations as to what sites should deliver. Add to the problems that they have yet to monetize. But they were a ground breaking site & uers should understand that they have problems, are doubtless doing their best & should wish them well.
sbspalding
· 1 year ago
My comment is a might cynical, I agree, but what I was trying to point out is that their scaling and community issues are the result of not expecting to ever "take off". They hadn't taken their own wild success into account.
More unfortunately for them, they didn't change the gory details (TOS) to align with the new way their customers were using the product.
CyndyA
· 1 year ago
And what if you didn't have to start over? What if porting the data was a reality?
Koka
· 1 year ago
I'm not ready to leave Twitter yet either. They community is great and though the service has been having issues, I hope they can fix it before there is an exodus.
dental websites
· 1 year ago
It is only natural for Twitter to have its growing pains. Most of these site types that grow quickly, no matter how hard they planned, have problems as they age and become used more and more. On the personal side, I really have not gotten into Twitter. I just don't seem to understand it, why would someone care what I am up to all the time.
Greg Hollingsworth
· 1 year ago
I apologize for being a couple days late to the party on responding (thanks for the assist Steve). I just want to say that I think the comments are exactly what I expected.
Even with all the tumult surrounding the issues Twitter has had, no one is really leaving the site. Sure, they may be checking out other services, but what they are finding is that Twitter (even with it's issues) does what it does better than anything else.
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in voicing my support for Twitter, which has unlocked several opportunities for me (as well as countless other users I'm sure). My questioning tone may have been interpreted as questioning Twitter, it was not meant to. It was meant to question the animosity that Twitter's recent issues has caused.
How to earn onlin
· 1 year ago
So, I've been saying this for a long time, but I feel that twitter should sell to someone with lots of servers (google comes to mind). The reason is that users will resent the downtime. So why not take the hundred or two hundred mil and call it a day :D
sbspalding
· 1 year ago
No worries mate. You made some really fantastic points. Great article.
Matt Galigan
· 1 year ago
Greg, terribly sorry it's taken us so long to comment on this. I'm one of the founders of Socialthing! and I just want to let you know we're far from dead and gone. We've got a good loyal userbase, but most importantly, for the past two months we've been hard at work on our massively revamped version 2.0. It's now almost done, and it will really change the way people think about our service. I hope once it's out, you get a chance to check it out and let us know what you think...we'd really love to hear what you think!
Greg Hollingsworth
· 1 year ago
I will certainly check it out (as I check out damn near everything anyone links to). I was probably a little heavy handed with my pronouncement of Socialthing!'s death, I know it's not dead. I was using it as an example of something that had a lot of hype upon initial release (which it did) and then the trumpeting died off. Perhaps died on the vine wasn't the right phrase.
I will make sure to check in over at socialthing! sometime soon.
sbspalding
· 1 year ago
Feel free to drop us a line using the contact form. I'd love to take a look at it once it's live.
Cheers,
asktheadmin
· 1 year ago
Great article! I myself never got into twitter or friend feed. But these services are here to stay and this goes to show you can't treat your users like idiots... @ least not to their faces!
Gregory Heller
· 1 year ago
I recently blogged about this as well. Though I have seen many newer services popping up recently, and showing up in my twine feeds, I cannot imaging jumping ship on twitter. It is where everyone I follow (and everyone who follows me) is. And unless there is some mass migration, you won't find me plurking anytime soon.
cosmetic dentist
· 7 months ago
twitter has grown massively since this post i use it all the time now as do many of my colleagues
Get rid of Stretch Marks
· 2 months ago
Ya I admit that Twitter grace is galling day by day but you need to fund out the reasons behind that and try to solve out the problems behind that.
All Comments
I like Twitter, and I think they're probably doing everything they can. The bottom line is, like say Tivo, it's a service that can be replicated. There's nothing so sensational about Twitter that it can't be overcome by another similar (more reliable) service.
The issue isn't that no one can do it better (although up to this point no one really has), it's that rebuilding a community from scratch is an arduous process that can take a lot of time. I for one wouldn't want to start over (and I only have about 530 followers).
Saying that, I have 165 followers (not 530 like you, or the thousands that others do), and I'm not intending to build an audience strictly for business reasons.
Unfortunately, with Twitter (and the auto-follow bullshit) there is no real way of knowing just how much your audience is listening. Now, if you're a new media celebrity (e.g. Scoble, Chris Brogan, Leo Laporte, etc...) you could probably take an audience with you, but most of us use twitter for conversation, not explicitly to increase our personal brand.
Sometimes it may be a little of both (and you have at least one more follower know), but even 530 is a paltry number considering the 1 million+ users of Twitter.
I've "eavesdropped" on tons of great conversations that I would have completely missed had I strictly friended people that I knew.
I guess it all boils down to motivation.
I think it speaks to the value of Twitter that so many people get this upset when Twitter has problems. People are going to be vocal about their displeasure with Twitter, but they are definitely invested in it more so than many other services. The trick is for Twitter not to squander that by repeatedly abusing that investment from its users.
Still not completely sure, but I think that's what I find troubling about the witch burning.
I completely agree with your last paragraph though. If people didn't care, they wouldn't say a word.
I also agree that Friendfeed is a different beast altogether, and to be honest, I greatly prefer Twitter.
But even just this morning, word is moving around Twitter (when I can get updates through Twhirl) about Plurk (which is useless to me as it won't render it's timeline in Firefox) as a possible alternative.
If we judged ourselves the same way some users are judging twitter, we would be in trouble. I make mistakes, forget things, over extend myself, veer off track, but those idiosyncrasies make me human. Twitter was an idea born of humans, so it's going to have those human qualities.
Nurturing is how great ideas are brought to fruition. We need to remember this when we interact with the world.
Hopefully it's just a slow news week and public sentiment turns around again.
I think people are so fickle over Twitter because it's a service that so many people love to use and it's a service that so many people probably depend on now. Also, to the normal end user, it's frustrating to think that a service which handles the broadcasting of 140 characters or less messages has so many problems. I would think that what they are doing would be simple, but apparently it's not.
It's also interesting to note that Twitter was developed to allow people to answer the question, "What are you doing right now?" Instead, people are using Twitter as a global instant messaging service which is way out of line as to the way Twitter was supposed to work. It would appear to me that Twitter may have to completely revamp the service in order to align themselves with the way the majority of us use their service.
is that their scaling and community issues are the result of not expecting
to ever "take off". They hadn't taken their own wild success into account.
More unfortunately for them, they didn't change the gory details (TOS) to
align with the new way their customers were using the product.
On the personal side, I really have not gotten into Twitter. I just don't seem to understand it, why would someone care what I am up to all the time.
Even with all the tumult surrounding the issues Twitter has had, no one is really leaving the site. Sure, they may be checking out other services, but what they are finding is that Twitter (even with it's issues) does what it does better than anything else.
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in voicing my support for Twitter, which has unlocked several opportunities for me (as well as countless other users I'm sure). My questioning tone may have been interpreted as questioning Twitter, it was not meant to. It was meant to question the animosity that Twitter's recent issues has caused.
I will make sure to check in over at socialthing! sometime soon.
at it once it's live.
Cheers,