What Twitter Will Look Like In 2012 (Image, Rant & Prediction)
Rant
Now that the image part is out let me rant. By the way, I will be ranting quite a bit so grab a beer. You’ll need it.
Not sure why but I am in full swing to express my views on twitter. If you read my previous post on twitter you already know what I use twitter for. That’s right! I use it to sit on my ass and browse the stream of non sense messages that flows in there half the time. Sometimes I end up grabbing tweets that talk about someone taking a dump and other days tweets that ask “what would you prefer? Your spouse cheating with a human or animal?”
Twitter grew so fast that it is almost unbelievable. I don’t remember where I saw it but I guess 1 out of 20 Americans are now tweeting. Way to go folks. Mark my words guys, twitter isn’t the next big thing as people make it to be. Sure, Facebook is quite jealous of this toddler but Facebook at least knows how to walk while twitter is still crawling. Don’t even tell me the service is still in it’s infancy. It has been fed by a couple investors with a few million dollars and by now it should, at least, have had enough strength to roll in some dollars.
The service has now become a favorite among celebrities. Oprah joined twitter a while ago and everyone started praising twitter yet again. Sure, Oprah must have brought a couple thousands new users to twitter, but I seriously doubt the baby making moms that follow Oprah will have time to tweet. Ohh and Mr. Kutcher showing his wife’s ass is exactly why 75% of his million followers follow him. Got to follow @aplusk, never know when Demi might walk in a night gown. The twitter hype is completely unbelievable.
Next thing that is extremely bothersome about twitter is it seems like the twitter business model is non existent. Sure, sure they are cooking up something good.
If you are going to cook something, you need to take it off the stove after it’s cooked. What’s the point of sitting on an idea for so long that it might be too late to implement. It’s just like cooking food. You cook it for too long and it either boils and gets spilled over or gets burnt enough to be thrown away. That is twitter’s business model. It’s either boiling more than it should or getting burnt to the point where it will be useless pretty soon, that is if there is any, which I doubt.
Half the freaking world seems to be making money off of twitter, either directly or indirectly. Marketers are using it to promote their products and content, businesses are using it as a customer service tool and there are services such as hootsuite helping users make money. But twitter still lacks a concept to make money. Go figure.
And the updates that twitter rolls out. You know, making life easier by adding features is a totally different thing than moving shit around. Trending topics used to be under the search bar and now they show up on the sidebar. Although there is some ease of use I don’t really see anything that is big enough to call it a “feature.” For some reason I have grown a hatred towards twitter. I know, it’s a cool, nifty and half the time useless service and a love child of all the internet users. Well, I am different and they call me the shit for a reason.
Twitter lacks features but there are probably more than thousands of apps that float on the internet. There is even one that measures the size of your tweet and compares it to the anaconda (yeah right) hiding in your pants. And there are others that help users analyze their influence within the community. What a crock of shit!
Well that was the rant of the day. The thing about twitter is it better do something soon if it wants to carry on. We web users are known to kick a web service to the curb when the next big thing comes up. You all say twitter is great, twitter is free, twitter is awesome to connect and market and whatever the hell that you all do on there, but remember twitter is a business and for a business to survive it needs money not billions of users and mentions on magazines and usage by celebrities.
If twitter doesn’t do something to generate revenue there won’t be anymore investors lining up for them. No investors says, “Here take a couple million dollars. Go ahead and do what you got to do. I will write the return on my investment in the will for my grandkids.” Investors want to see results. Of course it takes time but don’t we all want return on our investment sooner. The way twitter seems to be going it seems like it might take years, if not decades, that is if they can pay to keep the site live.
If twitter doesn’t roll out something soon, in couple years twitter might just end up making money by selling affiliate links, viagra ads and endorsing porn stars. And with that I will end my rant. Whether it makes sense to you or not is something that I don’t really give a shit about.
I really hope twitter works their shit out and wish them all the best. It’s hard to see any business fail. But if it doesn’t, here is my prediction
Prediction
Mark my words, twitter won’t last past 2012. Now you wouldn’t really remember I said this in 2012 so subscribe to the feed and I will remind you again in the future.Yeah, I will still be around but twitter won’t.
18 Rockin' Comments
May 8th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Right, cause Evan Williams is new to this whole ‘online’ business and doesn’t know his arse from his elbow when it comes to building successful sites & making money from them….s-u-r-e.
Ever think that perhaps they are not building just another social networking site but maybe the next communication protocol? Do you remember when email first came about, and you could only email people on the same host as you? It took each host standardising before you could start communicating between hosts.
Once that started email really took off and look what it’s like now. When was the last time you met someone without an email account? When was the last time you went a day without checking your emails? It is an integral part of our lives.
Steps are already being made to turn the micro-blogging platform into a set of open protocols, have a look at the recently Open Sourced Jaiku or Identi.ca.
Twitter in its current incarnation might not make it to 2012 (though I think it will) but the protocol which grows out of twitter is here to stay.
May 9th, 2009 at 5:05 am
Well there’s a lot of buzz around twitter, and lots of investors are willing to hold back and relish since the hype on twitter isn’t dying, it’s actually growing. Of course there will be a point where Twitter reaches critical mass and begins to accelerate it’s growth right before it plateaus and dies down. But then again look at Facebook - it still hasn’t hit that point yet.
May 9th, 2009 at 8:03 am
Aaron Bassett said, “Do you remember when email first came about, and you could only email people on the same host as you?”
Email never worked that way. It was always based on TCP/IP.
And Twitter is not a communication protocol…
May 9th, 2009 at 8:08 am
Constructive criticism… Please?!
May 9th, 2009 at 8:16 am
> “Ever think that perhaps they are not building just another social networking site but maybe the next communication protocol?”
What? Nothing about Twitter is a revolutionary new communication protocol. In fact, Twitter is built upon *existing* communication protocols. Even AOL came up with a new protocol for AIM; Microsoft for Messenger. Twitter does no such thing.
May 9th, 2009 at 8:17 am
@Aaron, you laud twitter as the “The next communication protocal” and compare it to email. You seem to be forgetting something about email, in that is in fact, useful. Real conversation can take place in a private environment with email. You don’t get that with Twitter. Twitter and it’s kin are at best, a fad. By themselves, they offer nothing new to the world except as a delusion for people, who not think people give a damn what they are doing.
Realistically, it’s not bringing anything useful, at all, to a market. It’s something the ADHD-induced, Myspace-class Web user will use for a couple months before they get bored of it. It has no functionality other then letting people know that your at the store or taking a shit and this may stun you but guess what? No one cares.
May 9th, 2009 at 8:28 am
You make a good point. But the vast majority of twitter traffic is boring crap. If they find a way to sort individual tweets so that stuff that YOU find interesting is brought to your attention, then I believe that it can become something big.
May 9th, 2009 at 8:29 am
That Evan Williams has built successful websites and made lots of money doesn’t mean that he has the Midas touch - that everything he touches will turn to gold.
Google has made lots of money and has experience making successful websites. Yet Google Answers is defunct. Microsoft has lots of money and has experience with making successful operating systems. Yet look at the adoption rate of Windows Vista compared to Windows XP. It’s been 2+ years and still Windows XP reigns supreme.
That said, I actually think that twitter may be here to stay. Evan Williams may someday create a company that ceases to have an impact but I don’t believe that twitter is that company.
Consider YouTube. It wasn’t profitable for its early investors until Google bought them out. I suspect twitter will share the same fate.
Also, the fact that the vast majority of twitter’s content is utter crap doesn’t say as much about twitter as it does about twitter’s userbase. twitter didn’t make itself popular - we did. Well, the self-important and self-deluded among us. And so long as such people exist, websites like twitter will exist.
May 9th, 2009 at 8:45 am
I could not agree more, I’ve been saying this since the beginning. I registered for twitter, and have added like six updates since. I don’t get the hype at all, and I only really use it to market things as you said.
What’s worse is they recently switched from tinyurl to bit.ly to handle all their URL shortening. The problem is unless twitter absorbs bit.ly, there’s going to be a lot of broken links in a couple years. I mean twitter you can slap a business model on, but bit.ly? Who the hell would invest in a URL shortening company, when there’s thousands already, and twitter seems to be switching it up all the time?
I mean what the hell can twitter do to make money, and at the same time not piss everyone off? They can’t just start charging for the service can they? How about an ad in the sidebar? Nobody will click that; people are far to net-savvy to fall for the old ad in the sidebar trick. Actually, on second thought, most people are fucking retarded so maybe that’s their best plan. Then Google wins too.
May 9th, 2009 at 8:46 am
lol, nothing will make it passed 2012 thats the year ends, duh!
May 9th, 2009 at 9:22 am
I HATE TWITTER
I’m an Internet Marketer and although i have made a “few” sales from Twitter I still hate the idea and the concept. TOO MUCH ADVERTISING!. It disgusts me to see so much Internet marketing in one social network everyone is trying to make a sale. I like it better when the social networks are fighting “SPAM” not embracing it. At the end of the day it’s not what you say, but how you say it, yet and still i’m not a fan of twitter. Unfortunately I think it will make it to 2012 but it wont be anything special. If you think about it, All twitter has done has opened the door for another social network which is going to come in TAKE TWITTERS idea and give it a twist. LoL it might even be Facebook or Myspace. In my opinion theres nothing special about twitter it’s a fad, celebrities will keep it past 2012 but one day we will look back and say “remember that twitter thing” which in my view will look like disco. Then again I hate twitter so don’t take my word for it
May 9th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
I used to have more confidence in the folks running Twitter, but now I’m not so sure..
They are moving at a snail’s pace in terms of innovation and development, and one gets the sense (at least some do) that people are already beginning to lose interest.
Either way, they need to start making at least some money if they want to succeed. Here’s hoping.
May 9th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Psych.
Sorry bro above me, but you’re wrong. The “twitter” hype may be here right now, but come 2012, the entire format will have faded away, nobody will ever use a system like Twitter again (thank god).
May 21st, 2009 at 9:01 am
I actually like Twitter, but I have to agree. A good example is Myspace.com. They have seen a steady decline in recent months as Facebook gains more popularity. However, I give them up until 2013 or slightly longer and I predict the decline will be mostly driven by annoying ads (after they get bought out) and after all the media buzz dies down. Nothing last forever.
May 21st, 2009 at 7:47 pm
This is a shit post.
Who fucking cares if Twitter doesn’t make it? Are you jealous or something?
May 23rd, 2009 at 5:39 am
I was wondering if that twitter thing works and how much it is Guess I have to click it and find OUT
LOL
Dude you have a cool blog and some cool people stopping by
enjoyed my visit
Stumbled and RT < just cause it does SUCK : )
maybe some diet Life coach Guru will stop by and stick up for twitter
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