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Finally someone with some common sense – which is not so common these days.
Jason Clark, VP and Creative Director at VIA Studio says that “Twitter’s fame and glory is not going to last.” Below is the summary but you can read full article here.
“I do see it as being overhyped on a massive level and predict its obsolescence in a year or less.”
He says Twitter won’t be as important as some think. He points to Friendster and how it was surpassed by MySpace which in turn was surpassed by Facebook in a shorter time doing the same thing.
He says as with any internet “gold rush,” as soon as others demonstrate success, everyone moves in, and the “next big thing” is born.
“All I have to do is mention QuickBooks, and I have 30 QuickBooks “experts” following me in hopes of getting business. How long will it take to wear people down dealing with these kinds of requests?… I predict Twitter will find its social media and marketing niche, but I cannot see it being nearly as important as some marketers are making it out to be.”
He also points out the retention rate of Twitter is ONLY around 30 percent, which means seven out of 10 people try it out once and don’t come back. So to get users the hype must continue and the process it becomes overhyped.
“Twitter seems to be proud of the fact that it has no profit model. I’m imagining that the company will want to keep the hype building long enough to sell the company for a few billion dollars… I also cannot foresee Twitter’s user base growing too much higher than it is now.
The simple functionality of Twitter will also lead to a glut of competition in the next few months, with companies duking it out for the best implementation of the microblogging model. There’s not enough to Twitter to keep it on the top of the heap. Being first in this case, as we’ve seen, is not a guarantee that you will have longevity.”
Rest in peace (RIP) Twitter.
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[...] Twitter Will Be Obsolete In A Year – Or framed another way… will we move on? Mobile will decid… Does it really matter if Twitter is obsolete in a year? Not really. What matters more is the direction exploring and understanding its appeal can take the individual or the enterprise in. What bothers me most about Twitter is "it is not!" an end to end delivery service and they are filtering public messages to others by my friends. I still see more opportunities for Twitter, I also see competition and in some cases it will come from the app developers that have been most successful on Twitter. (tags: twitter) [...]
Pingback by links for 2009-06-16 | stuart henshall — June 16, 2009 @ 12:02 AM
[...] I suspect that this emerging concentration of attention and time allocation onto purposeful activities is what is behind the thinking in this extract from a WebGuild piece by Daya Baran titled “Twitter Will Be Obsolete In A Year“. [...]
Pingback by Twitter – The Infrastructure of Context-Driven Social Search, or Flash in the Pan ? | Start FaceBook — June 16, 2009 @ 11:56 AM
I don’t know much about social media or other 2.0 things, and I can see from related posts on this website that you’ve got something against twitter. It iurely is overhyped, but saying that Twitter is doomed while we can see its incredible democratic necessity in Iran, is just plain dumb.
Comment by Mark — June 16, 2009 @ 2:27 PM
Again it is interesting that microblogging Twitter is following the same attrition foot steps of big brother the blog.
How many people are proclaiming blogging to be dead due to the abandonment rate of blogs?
Why would an attrition or abandonment rate of 70% on Twitter be a concern or a surprise?
Comment by dean guadagni — June 16, 2009 @ 3:45 PM
why are people so negative about Twitter? There are many clones of Twitter which are not very succesful or as well known, en the abandonrate doesn’t say anything, there are still millions of users writing every day, the other 30%, so what’s your point?
Comment by artgrrl — June 17, 2009 @ 3:19 AM
Twitter be doomed. I hate it. Wish it would die and go away. I am sick of hearing about Twitter this and Twitter that. Twitter here and Twitter there. If it is so good why are they HYPING it so much.
Comment by Jason Q — June 17, 2009 @ 9:51 AM
If people are too lazy to take two seconds to check the people who follow them–in other words, if they auto-follow–it’s their own fault if they get swamped with “entrepreneurs.”
Like any communications tool, Twitter is only as good as the way it’s utilized. The very fact that the spammers dominate skews the results of the Harvard study, and the lack of any real tutorial on the Twitter site itself–the assumption that everyone who signs up will immediately know how to use the system–will also skew survey results.
Twitter’s biggest problem is that, at the moment, it’s an “in thing.” For the net-savvy, it works. For those less knowledgeable, it’s confusing and intimidating. If that can be overcome, it has a much more promising future than the complicated sites like Myspace and Facebook.
Comment by Elizabeth Burton — June 23, 2009 @ 8:20 AM
I agree with Elizabeth. The folks that haven’t taken the time to understand its uniqueness are the ones who want to bring it down. No disrespect to the author, Jason Clark (@clarkster) as I appreciate his viewpoint, but if you look at his tweets they are of the ‘chat’ variety, and not the key industry information/knowledge sharing type. What I find Twitter does really well is not as 2-way chatter but as informing multiple others in like tribes about key info one might not find on our own. I do love it for that.
Comment by @beckysnyder — June 26, 2009 @ 12:03 PM
Jason Clark and other prophets in the media circus will also, one day, become obsolete.
Comment by Paul Wheaton — September 27, 2009 @ 9:15 AM
I'm loving this post. I have it bookmarked, just so that I can come back in a years time and say hey – guess what – Twitter is bigger and better and more important than ever. I love these social media cretins who actually know nothing at all.
Comment by Phil — October 20, 2009 @ 12:37 AM