I have been a big fan of Twitter.com after I finally started using it many months ago and it seems like everybody uses it, even big companies promote their pages on Twitter and Facebook on TV.
It seems that Facebook.com and Twitter.com almost always go hand in hand when websites promote their social networking pages.
One thing about Twitter, is that it seems to me they have maxed out already and some people may even be leaving (not using) the site! Why after so much love by everybody, that it seems Twitter is in trouble?
Downtime
It seems that the site is down so much, it is crazy! I really do not visit the site all that often but a lot of the times I do try to visit, I get to see the whale they always display saying the site is over capacity!
Spam
I get tons of requests every day to follow people, but the vast majority are all spam related posts that do me little to no good! It is often hard to detect who is good to follow and who is not.
Auto Direct Messages
These things suck and it is mainly because Twitter doesn’t allow a bulk delete function. If you happen to approve somebody to follow and they are of the spammy type, you will almost instantly get a Direct Message (DM) from them. Again, this is like your email box filling up with spam emails, all pushing some glorified product or how they made so much money doing X.
Since Twitter keeps allowing these Auto DM’s and doesn’t even offer a bulk delete function.. these get annoying very fast.
Reply
If somebody replies to a tweet you made or you reply to a tweet somebody else made… there is no function or text to know what the person is replying back to you about! Getting the reply will most of the time leave you in the dark on what the person is replying to you about. This makes the service very frustrating.
Outside Apps and Tools
Twitter opened their API up pretty quickly. Everyday different tools and services become available to work with Twitter. This is often good but many of these services allow for easy spamming. These tools almost always have a good side to them but people find out ways to use the good and turn them into not so good things. Auto Direct Messages is a good example.
IMO, Twitter should of sold when they had the chance! I think Twitter is going to lose popularity and slowly fade into the sunset unless a lot of positive changes take place.
Facebook.com on the other hand keeps growing! I think the biggest reason for this is because it is not Spammy! You get the function of Twitter without the spam. Don’t get me wrong, FB has it’s issues as well but nothing like Twitter.
Only time will tell with what happens to Twitter, but changes are needed!
Kevin M.
On every thing you note above about Twitter – DITTO!!
Who-TF is going to read the tweets of 2-3-4000 followers?? 99.5% are buried in ‘past tweets’ that won’t be read anyways! (Unless one ‘twitters’ 24/7!!) And if something ‘big’ happens, the whole ‘twitter universe’ tweets the same thing for hours! Good grief! The bigger Twitter gets, to me, the less relevent, and more confusing it’ll become. Basically, my opinion of it now!
Mark S.
Depends on who is using and how they are. With new updates rolling out spam will be cut down and people will be able to utilize twitter more.
steve fox
I hate twitter
Waste of time to me.
Mojito Recipe
Spam has already killed Twitter in my opinion!
Fred
Twitter is dead? Maybe to you, but not the 50 million people that use it everyday. Domainers….always good for a laugh.
You are either misinformed or this post is just deliberate linkbait.
Mark Fulton
Sorry guys, Twitter isn’t going anywhere.. might as well make the most of it. Great for networking, great for business, why even compare it with FB?
Any site getting downtime obviously is ridiculously popular… why would they become thing of the past?
There are tools to fix alot of things you mentioned. Follow directions here to opt out of auto DMs:
http://twitter.com/optmeout
Many spam block tools available and Twitter even implemented a prominent SPAM link right next to the follow/unfollow links just 2 days ago… give it some time, I think it will stomp out 90% of spam.
Anthony
Jamie … Here’s the question.
What’s most likely to happen ?
Facebook adding a Twitter like app ?
or Twitter becoming a Facebook ?
Jamie Zoch
@Fred,
50 million a day? Twitter doesn’t even get 25 Million unique visitors a Month. Here is a TechCrunch article recently about numbers going flat for Twitter. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/13/as-facebook-nears-100m-u-s-visitors-twitter-falls-further-behind-in-the-rear-view-mirror/
Jason at GoDrops.com
Twitter is awesome! Go where the people are! Learn how to use it and to your advantage and it will pay you back… e.g. I’ve opened up a chat for only my twitter friends (people I follow) at http://godrops.com/chat
There are ways to cut down on spam, it all goes down to how ‘trust’ is setup. With twitter it’s followers. Use it or don’t, twitter and things like it are here to stay…
P.S. @Jamie, I like how you categorize (prefix) your tweets =)
Domain Report
I think Twitter is becoming a fixture on the internet. Many websites, newspapers, magazines, tv newscasts and businesses have twitter accounts to keep in touch with their followers – and they actively promote their accounts. It’s a great business tool to give quick updates and news to a group of people who are interested in what you have. Twitter has had explosive growth so it’s bound to slow down somewhat, but it will keep growing. Twitter offers something MySpace and Facebook don’t. And I think the search function of Twitter will be big – getting real time news and feedback about events from millions of users – that is a great feature.
Jamie Zoch
@Anthony,
I think FB changed to a more Twitter approach with it’s last update. As for an app, I have no clue because I do not use my phone on the net.. which means I know very little about apps.
dcmike77
Twitter is just a fad. Who uses myspace anymore? Or what about paging? Those were all cool at one time not anymore.
Google Wave is coming and will blow twitter out of the water.
Jamie Zoch
@Mark,
Thanks for the link. I do heavily find Twitter useful and you can really make money using it but getting tweets about all the blah blah making money, how to get x amount of followers is getting old. It was just interesting to see traffic numbers flat for several months now. Then you hear celebs saying they are done with twitter etc. I think several things are pointing to traffic numbers going down.. but again, only time will tell.
Fred
Their traffic has fallen flat after an explosive growth over the past year. So that means the service is dead? Are you kidding me? And dcmike, the fact that you compare Twitter to Myspace is the first indication that you have zero knowledge of anything to do with social media. Stick to parking pages.
Jamie Zoch
@Fred,
I never said they were “Dead”. I said “I think Twitter is going to lose popularity and slowly fade into the sunset unless a lot of positive changes take place.” Since traffic has flattened, which I think is because of many of the problems I stated, unless something changes.. the site will continue to stay flat and even go down in users. If you though I meant “slowly fad into the sunset unless a lot of positive changes take place” meant it was “Dead”, that is not the case. A site with Millions of month unique visitors can not be “dead”.
~
I have seen numbers in the past (I didn’t look for them again) but I thought it said some 5% of twitter users make up the majority of the activity on the site.
Jon
Twitter and other social services sites are just platforms to waste time and platforms for spammers to sell to other spammers.
Mark Fulton
Just a note on Twitter traffic.. it is only a fraction of the actual usage. Because of the open API there are people not even visiting Twitter.com but still active:
Top 100 Twitter app by usage today:
http://twitstat.com/twitterclientusers.html
Note that “Web” use accounts for only 20%.
Kevin
99% of the tweets on Twitter are idiotic and I doubt anyone is even reading them.
Yesterday the tweets about Balloon Boy peaked at 30,000 per minute. All saying the same things.
It can be useful, but only in a limited amount of ways and you have to know what you’re doing.
Facebook is much more well structured and stronger for networking and marketing.
Stephen Douglas
Jamz, I agree with you.
Anyone interested, please see my followup response, and details about my experience with Twitter (with credit back to Jamz) for the article, on my blog at http://www.successclick.com. I usually move more detailed responses to my blog, and for sure I can’t put them on Twitter. lol
Great article, Jamz.
nSathees
Twitter and FB are open virus.