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Prediction: Twitter will die before Facebook does

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

I don’t normally get into the prediction business, but a post by Lisa Barone at Outspoken Media got my attention and made me think about the future of social media. A Twittervention! What If There Was No Twitter? was written to suggest, among other things, that companies shouldn’t be relying solely on Web applications like Twitter or Facebook to maintain a Web presence. Companies need to continue to maintain Web presences that they own, control, and influence. That makes perfect sense to me.

Lisa also made the point of predicting, with absolute certainty, that Twitter will eventually die. I think she’s right, in the sense that almost every application or website eventually dies and is replaced by something else.

I left the following comment on her blog post:

I think that Facebook could replace Twitter in a heartbeat and would probably fill the inevitable void that would appear if Twitter died.

With three possible exceptions:

1. The proliferation of apps that give Twitter’s simple platform power and flexibility (but maybe it wouldn’t be hard to handle that).

2. The limits on followers/friends (although that can be circumvented with Facebook pages).

3. Search: Facebook is the walled garden. Tweets can be found via various types of searching, but Facebook, she’s-a locked solid unless you’re really sneaky (or so I believe I’ve heard).

Just my $0.02. There are still a ton of people who don’t see the value of Twitter updates, but they’ll play around in Facebook, leaving status updates and electronic trails, until their fingers go numb. I think that’s something important to consider.

P.S. OK, I really do like (even love) Twitter. But I don’t think it will be huge crisis when it fails. I really can’t see Facebook failing.

I got thinking about this more today. I really think that a site like Facebook is the future, not Twitter. Facebook is “good enough” for the average user. As technology continues to spread and complex things become simpler and easier to do, they will become mainstream.

Here’s the thing: unless Twitter eventually becomes more functionality rich and does more than shunt text (links are text, after all) around the Web, it’s limited. I know, I know, a lot of people are perfectly happy with the limitations around Twitter. At the same time, a lot of people were perfectly happy with the limitations around:

Wordperfect
Lotus 1-2-3
Dial up bulletin board systems
ARCHIE, VERONICA, and Gopher
MS-DOS
IP addresses before domain names were created
Two-digit years being stored in databases
The original America Online, CompuServe, Prodigy, etc.
Usenet
The original Sony Walkman that played audio cassettes
VHS and BETA
Cathode ray televisions
Black and white televisions
Stoves and freezers before microwave ovens came along
DVD is on the road to being replaced by Blu-Ray

And the list goes on.

My point is that we demand not only simplicity and ease of use, but also functionality.

Twitter is a limited platform that is unlikely to evolve. Gen Y and younger (not to mention members of Gen X and older) can do Twitter in their sleep. But, it probably doesn’t do everything they want to do. They aren’t into just reading text. Yes, you can send links via Twitter, but each extra click you add is a barrier to it being used.

Facebook can basically do everything that Twitter can do, plus a whole lot more. To some people, Facebook is the Web because it’s a portal to other things. You can share photos on it. You can write your notes. You can share links. You can keep track of your friends. You can spend hours on it playing Flash games. And so on.

Twitter? You can send text messages. But only short ones. With links. But unless you have an extra app loaded, you really don’t know what the links are until you click on them.

Facebook could eventually die as well. It probably will die someday. It has its own limits and it may yet be replaced by a better (read: open) platform.

But which will die first? Twitter, no question in my mind. It may take 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, or longer, but Twitter will eventually die because simple tools only last until something equally simpler, cheaper, easier to use and more powerful comes along. We’ve seen it over and over again with different kinds of technology. The same thing will likely happen to Facebook. But I think Twitter will die first.

What do you think?

Twitter’s retweet confusion (guardian.co.uk)
Power Users Drive the Vast Majority of Twitter Usage (mashable.com)
Twitter launching location-based Trending Topics (downloadsquad.com)

Also, Twitter is the Drive-Thru, Facebook is the Sit down Restaurant

Tags: facebook, twitter
Posted in social media | 16 Comments »

A simple theory on why social media is losing its mojo

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

I’ve been trying to wrack my brains on how to present this theory elegantly, but that’s not going well. I’m going to try a more direct approach.

I believe that I’m seeing a trend whereby links shared by Twitter are being clicked on less frequently than they were even six months ago. I know that in my own experience that I can’t (and don’t) check out the vast majority of the links that I see within the different websites that I use. I think other people are experiencing the same situation.

Put simply, I think that each new social media service that we start using makes it harder to keep up with things in general. At first, the cornucopia of Web offerings seems really great and we start using them as soon as we hear about them. We’re exposed to lots of different people, new knowledge, and generally enjoy ourselves. Each new website seems like a shiny new toy. Sometimes we get caught up in the thrill in making new connections and our friend lists grow.

But it doesn’t seem to be like it used to be. People don’t seem to connect with each other as much or follow each other’s work.

I keep trying to relate Barry Schwartz’s book The Paradox of Choice to this phenomenon. It’s not a perfect fit, but I think there are some things to consider about this.

The paradox of choice is that something that should make us feel happy and fulfilled (having great flexibility of choices in our lives) often leads to stress and anxiety. There’s a number of reasons for this:

too many options makes the act of making a decision more of picking from a dizzying list of options rather than selecting from a few alternatives that you can easily understand and research
analysis-paralysis sets in: how do I spend my time with so much information being thrown at me?
when something that seemed fun becomes work, we might tend to do it less

I think some people abandon social media services because they take work to keep up with, especially if you try to keep track of people that you’ve never physically met them. I also think that, after awhile, as you follow too many people, the number of links and updates shared by other people just feel overwhelming and we decide to not bother following them at all for long periods of time. This would be similar to the feeling you have when you check your E-Mail inbox in the morning and find 500 E-Mails.

There’s also the problem of offering that are just too similar. There are literally hundreds of social media blogs out there, as an example. But which ones do you follow? You try to settle down with a handful of blogs, but then you hear about another good one, so you subscribe to it and… then you have to rationalize again.

As for all of the links that are shared by Twitter, there’s a definite downside to the URL shorteners like bit.ly. They do save characters when you are Tweeting, but they give no clue as to the actual website that the link is to, so then it becomes a case of who or what do you trust? How do you pick and choose? Can you trust what the Twitter user puts in for text or will it turn out to be crap or an affiliate link or…

Also, the fact that some people Tweet so many links, @replies, and other updates that you don’t know if the Tweets you see now are better than, or worse than, older Tweets. Tweets aren’t like blog posts that appear in your RSS reader: they tend to disappear more quickly.

So, with all of these factors, does it seem to make a bit more sense as to why people might not be clicking on links or otherwise monitoring their social media websites as much as they used to?

This post is a bit off the cuff, so it probably needs so more thought and work, but I think there’s some truth to it.

What do you think? Do you think the paradox of choice is causing people to turn away, in degrees, from social media? Is the flexibility killing the medium? Or is this just the jumbled musings of a partially awake blogger?

Tags: links, social media, twitter
Posted in social media | 40 Comments »

Taste defines when it does not trick

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh, available in the public domain

I’m still fixated on the concept of taste, as I blogged about recently after watching an Ira Glass video about content creators and the need for good taste. Taste is also something that I’ve been thinking about a bit since having read Trust Agents. Demonstrating good taste is a way to get people to trust you, especially if they’ve never met you before.

Dictionary.com has the following meanings for the noun taste:

A relish, liking, or partiality for something: a taste for music.
The sense of what is fitting, harmonious, or beautiful; the perception and enjoyment of what constitutes excellence in the fine arts, literature, fashion, etc.
The sense of what is seemly, polite, tactful, etc., to say or do in a given social situation.
One’s personal attitude or reaction toward an aesthetic phenomenon or social situation, regarded as either good or bad.
The ideas of aesthetic excellence or of aesthetically valid forms prevailing in a culture or personal to an individual: a sample of Victorian taste; I consulted only my own taste in decorating this room.
The formal idiom preferred by a certain artist or culture; style; manner: a façade in the Baroque taste.

The common thread running through these definitions is our preference and liking for things, which is often (or often seems to be) reflected in what we say and what we do.

Taste is an important signal. In simple terms, our taste is a defining characteristic and informs other people about the kind of person we are. Our signals of the things that we like or dislike provide clues to other people who meet us and allow them to form judgments about us. The clothes we wear, the books we read, the wines we drink, the music we listen to and the subjects that we Tweet about, rightly or wrongly, seem to demonstrate our tastes and help other people determine whether we should be friend, foe, or invisible. Maybe the first punk rock song that you heard made you spike your hair, pierce your nose, get tattooed, and generally develop an anti-social attitude (pardon the stereotyping, just trying to come up with a memorable example) – that demonstrates one kind of tastes. Perhaps seeing that a celebrity likes a certain kind of shirt turns you on to the same shirt – if they like it, it must be good, right?. Seeing someone drinking Miller Beer may give one impression; drinking 30 year old Scotch may give another. Seeing similar tastes can help build liking, if not trust, early on.

However, taste isn’t an absolute indicator. A tomboy might enjoy wearing beautiful dresses in the right environments. A lumberjack could be an avid knitter. Julia Child liked cheeseburgers. Many of us have tastes that run from exquisite to barbaric. For example, I’m one of three people in the world who really liked the movie version of the 1960s TV series The Avengers. I like good fiction in all forms, but I love the 70s series Space:1999 so much that I’d like to make a new version of it, despite the fact that I’m not a TV or movie pro. I love good food but I can eat McDonalds food occasionally and enjoy it. And so on. When you see someone enjoying crap, for want of a better word, you might miss the good stuff that they like.

Nonetheless, taste can work for you. If nothing else, it can lead to a handshake, a conversation, and a card exchange. It’s worth remembering that our public displays of taste help define us in the eyes of others. It’s not the only factor, but it’s definitely one worth remembering.

Tags: bad taste, beauty, clues, crap, equisiteness, good taste, personality, shlock, taste
Posted in social media | 2 Comments »

Why does the world need another blog topics post?

Saturday, January 2nd, 2010

The short answer is that I wanted to help people express themselves online and help them to build a blog, a social media profile, or otherwise self-actualize. The question is: why did I spend the time to create a post with more than 20,000 content ideas?

Yes, there’s no doubt that publishing a post like this, which got some decent sharing within social media sites, was a direct benefit to me. But I’m really hoping is that it was beneficial to you. On the surface, yes, you can generate a large number of blog post ideas, topics, articles, etc. by using the Content Idea Matrix. I provided a lot of content that you can use. Just print out the blog post, draw some lines, and you can easily create hundreds if not thousands of your own pieces of content.

However, there are three things that I really hope that you, the reader, got from reading the post:

The concept that you can mix and match ideas, people, characters, places, facts, thoughts, pieces, etc. to create new and different content, even if it is just a variation on an existing idea.
You can use a tool like the Content Idea Matrix to mix and match your own ideas together and see what kinds of content you can come up with using your own ideas.
Lots of other people had great ideas for blog topics and I including links to just a few of them at the end of the 20,000+ ideas post.

This is all about trying to help people do things by equipping with tools. This is the type of thing that a great blogger and writer that Chris Brogan does regularly and so do many others.

What I find, though, is that more and more social media content is focused on the enterprise, the organization, or the business professional. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that: the tools are there and they can be very effective for those purposes. More power to you if that’s why you or your organization want to use it for those reasons.

I just feel that the individual content creator is starting to get buried and ignored by all of this other activity. And that’s not only a shame, it’s just plain wrong. There’s a lot of talk online about how group blogs, as an example, are getting the most traffic, attention, and respect and the individual content creator is losing in the process. Of course, there are contrary examples where individuals are making their mark while organizations aren’t. But there seems to be more talk about the growing power of the groups (or the Collectives, if you will.)

Smart, talented, individual voices that want to make their mark, argue a point, champion a cause, or otherwise develop their talents are not just competing amongst themselves, but against larger groups with better resources, more content, and… you get the picture, right? Now let’s be honest: most people don’t become successful (however you define that) on their own. We all benefit from help. I’m starting to understand the wisdom of collaboration better than I ever have and I’m looking for ways to do a better job of doing that in 2010 and beyond. But, darn it, if you do good, meaningful work and can keep doing it, then you deserve some recognition and whatever rewards should rightfully come from that.

Recognition and rewards aren’t going to find you on their own: that’s a fact. You may have a passion that will not earn you any money and that may be something that you’ll have to come to terms with. Making your mark may make you unpopular and cause some problems, but there could be other amazing rewards as well. Nothing is guaranteed, but many things are possible.

This isn’t a proper manifesto (although that may be coming soon), but for now, I’m taking a step closer to focus things a bit more here at Broadcasting Brain. Different thoughts about thinking differently isn’t just an attempt at a witty slogan – there’s a purpose behind it. Apple was right in their famous slogan “think different”. It’s easy to copy other people’s great ideas – sometimes it’s essential. However, the best things arise from our own spin, take, and improvements. Other times we need to come up with completely different ideas, shake up the status quo, tear things down and build them up bigger.

Sometimes I’m better at thinking differently than acting differently, but it’s always possible to change, even if it’s just a little bit at a time. Maybe you feel the same way.

So my hope is that I can create useful content for people who want to wave their freak flag high and make their mark on the world. I hope I can share content, either my own or other people’s, that will get you thinking differently and doing better work, however you define it.

Let’s keep going.

Image by Marco Bellucci

Tags: blogging, content creation, group blogs, individual content creators, making a difference, making your mark
Posted in social media | No Comments »