michaelwales.com

I’ve had a Twitter account for a long time now, but only recently really started using it. Twitter has always had its ups and downs, mostly downs; but it seems as if it is really starting to go downhill now. Twitter can hardly manage to stay up for 24 hours at a time and people like Mike Arrington and Allen Stern feel as if it’s the loss of a public utility each time this happens.

I can’t say I feel the same at all - I don’t notice when Twitter goes down. Obviously, I’m not getting the full utility out of the application, primarily because none of my friends/family uses it. Twitter’s popularity has yet to spread beyond the Bay Area for the most part and my friends hardly have enough time to use it. Nor do I feel the need to use my cell phone to Twitter about an awesome poker game (if it was so great, I would be playing not Twittering).

It seems, to me at least, unless you are trying to portray a particular public image Twitter is nearly useless. Twitter isn’t used to converse with your friends, it wasn’t designed to and it makes it difficult (conversations aren’t threaded). If I come across an interesting reply from Mike Arrington to someone else it is impossible to go see what that person said without digging through all of their messages and just guessing at which particular tweet encouraged Arrington’s reply.

Jason Calacanis uses Twitter to show everyone how cool he is and how he’s living the Web 2.0 rockstar lifestyle. Mike Arrington promotes TechCrunch and probes the Bay Area for tidbits of information or to corroborate a story. Darren Rowse promotes Problogger and prods his followers for article ideas. Robert Scoble gets paychecks to mention companies in his tweets.

I’m not saying these are not worthy causes - Twitter is very good at being a promotional tool. But do I really care to watch a stream of ads all day, actively involve myself within this stream of ads, and care when this stream of ads goes down?

The Future of Twitter

There are a lot of Twitter competitors out there, which goes to show the concept behind Twitter is a powerful one. Pownce, backed by Kevin Rose of Digg, is a competitor I have tried that seems to be pushing itself into more of a file-sharing focus than others. Unfortunately, it’s so riddled with spammers it is literally impossible to use. Jaiku, now part of Google, and Hictu have also been receiving a bit of press as well, although I have not tried either service. Crunchbase has a full list of competitors on their Twitter profile.

Twitter itself is dead. With a third round of funding complete and no business model they’ve placed themselves into a position of debt (without the ability to repay it) only the United States Government can appreciate. Twitter is essentially the subprime market of Web 2.0.

Twitter has placed itself within the company of Kleenex, whereas their unique brand will no longer be used to identify their company - but will be used to describe a concept. I think the beauty of Twitter’s communication model can only be realized within niche communities, where each individual has an active interest in what other individuals have to say.

For instance, the CodeIgniter community would be an interesting test-bed for this type of communication method. We obviously have a lot to say with numerous blogs and websites focused on the framework although not officially part of the EllisLab network of sites. The difficulty lies in taking a community that is used to communicating in one manner (forums and personal blogs) and introducing this new “shout it to the world” twitter-style communication. The key would be integration with our current communication methods - where it is a seamless stream of information including forums, blogs, and tweet-style statuses.

Oh, and up-time of course.