A google/twitter deal seems HIGHLY logical to me and I think the speculation is DEFINITELY worthy of the buzz it got a few weeks ago. Twitter is current buzz. Google is long-term relationships/relevance. I think that Twitter also needs to balance the act of spam vs. let the network grow, which is very intriguing.
Myspace was hurt by spam/false profiles. This was a HUGE turn-off to folks in their 20s/30s and actually helped propel people over to Facebook. Keeping people from being ANNOYED in social networking is a big deal.
I had the same thoughts about e-mail a few weeks ago. How we manage our relationships via "in person", phone, e-mail. social networking, etc. Everyone is a bit different and the noise levels have DEFINITELY increased. I've found people really get annoyed by "the noise" of social networking and it takes time to adapt.
Good post. I'd prefer not to think of a google acquisition of twitter, though, as Facebook would be the better buying company for Twitter, Facebook, and the entire user community.
I fully buy into the impact that Twitter is having on existing social networks but I feel that it is a short-term bump in the road. People are trying to determine the right tools to use to communicate their message, Twitter is ideal for some uses, Facebook is great for others. The challenge today is people are trying to use one or two tools and are not using any of them optimally. Again, education in the market, maturity of the users, and potential partnerships between providers will reduce some of these challenges over time.
While I would never deny the impact Twitter has had on interaction, I'm really kind of sick of the hype around it. Just earlier this week Mashable had the article about 60% of Twitter users coming once, and never returning. If Twitter is to do things like slay Google, or slay Email (Email and Search Engines being the #1 & #2 most frequent activities by internet users, according to Pew) - it's going to have to catch in the mainstream. Not just the tech and marketing echo chambers.
Seth - You're a HuffPo blogger, so you should know firsthand the impact of Digg...since HuffPo is perpetually on the front page. Go post this article on Digg, and see the immediate negative comments you'll get from people about Twitter.
Yes, twitter is powerful, and the opportunities endless...but seriously, the overhype about Twitter is setting up a bubble.
Preternatural
· 7 months ago
Honestly, I am concerned that more and more we are seeing numbers being rejiggered to make the story what we want it to be. A few days ago world plus dog discussed the fact that while Twitter has a huge lead in sign-ups, it doesn't appear to be "sticky" enough to support itself over time. Even how they quantified these number don't take into account the fact that page views alone don't necessarily reflect Twitters true usage. Of greater concern for me is that I barely saw one article discussing that here on Mashable. It was like you guys completely ignored this. I like balanced media sources and you guys are really starting to turn into Fox cheerleaders with Twitter being the Republican Party.
Twitter is great, but its potential to wear on those who follow it more out of "fad"nificence and becoming stale is huge. Even more likely some early adopters are feeling put upon by the service's popularity with people wanting to let everyone know they're eating ice cream right this minute. Twitter is a great tool, of its kind it was never the greatest, but it is decent. Media personalities find it a media dream and write about it without being objective I guess because its use can increase page views. Still as a blogger one needs to exemplify some comprehension and understand where you're trying to get ad money from a page view others media properties are making real unadulterated money by providing something that people actually need. There is a difference.
Fact: signups do not sustain media properties. Money does and the fact is Myspace makes more money than Facebook and Twitter maybe even combined. Google of course makes more money than them all. Your article completely misses the point. Myspace makes money because it is a destination to a purpose Music and Videos. Incidentally some of those complaints you have about Myspace is where its making its money. Google makes money because it also meets a need real search. If I want to research a paper am I going to Google or Twitter? You are out to lunch on that. Are you really trying to say that Twitter, a search engine that doesn't yield any results outside of Twitter is going to take down Google? Oh yeah, but Twitter is great for current events as in no relevance tomorrow. Google on the other hand is indexing world + Twitter. One more thing, Twitter is less an authority on anything than even say Wikipedia and that's saying a lot.
Twitter and Facebook are struggling to FIND a way to make money primarily because what they offer is really just email on crack with group chat. Still, email on the internet and chat are FREE and it remains to be seen if people are going to stay with Twitter if they start charging or use ads. Twitter is ubiquitous in nature no doubt, but the question is, aside from consultants, bloggers and media personalities for which Twitter readily has value, what is Twitters real hook for the everyday person.?
When someone wants to see what the latest song is, they go to their computer/cellphone and visit a specialized web property like iTunes or Myspace. Need information, they go to Google. Plan a trip, write a paper or check on the symptoms of swine flu, they go to their computer. You state, as thought it were such a great thing that Twitter users don't have to go to their computer but as cellphones gain better net access less will have to and many don't now. Amazon, Google, Apple, Myspace, Microsoft, CheapTickets and everyone making money will tell you that when their customers sit at the computer/smartphones is when they make money. Twitter and Facebook can't claim this and any businessmen will tell you it's a serious problem. I'm seriously going to stop reading Mashable if this kind of "reporting" continues.
mashable
· 7 months ago
"A few days ago world plus dog discussed the fact that while Twitter has a huge lead in sign-ups, it doesn't appear to be "sticky" enough to support itself over time...Of greater concern for me is that I barely saw one article discussing that here on Mashable."
Huh, that's the one I saw. Still "The question is, how can Twitter make sure that users stick around for the long haul? What is it about Facebook and MySpace that make them so appealing? Could it be, possibly, that finding friends on Twitter remains harder than doing so on other social networks?" doesn't go far enough. Twitter and Facebook are not equal services just like Google and Twitter aren't even in the same league. Realtime is only about 'right now', but many things that actually matter have nothing to do with realtime.
Twitter is a presence technology that allows me to "update" my followers about my current activities without them having to go to directly to my Myspace or Facebook page. Yet, no one is looking at entire picture albums or blogs for that matter on Twitter. Why because Twitter is an assistive technology. It augments Facebook and Myspace and proper blogs, which aren't really suited to realtime, nor the mobile form factor. Also the untold millions that don't have blogs are given a voice by Twitter, which allows those of us to that choose to to snoop on people we follow without having to interact with them. Truth is, the early precursor to Twitter is "Growl" posting Sender and Subject information as emails hit your inbox only the growl notifications are not computer bound. Twitter has not the capacity to replace any of the other social media types and the sooner Mashable, Facebook and Myspace figure this out the better. Google is the "GoTo" on Search period. Twitter is the "Goto" on Twitter only, how could it possible replace Google. It can not. Seriously, people writing about this need a better grasp of technologies and the metaphors enabled by them.
TwitrFic
· 7 months ago
no mention of facecrook? Who even bothers with it anymore they just coppied twitter and why not just use the source.
Stumble Tweets
· 7 months ago
I have to agree, Twitter is currently the best real-time search available today period, this might be more useful than Google someday in 2015.
Garlin Gilchrist II
· 7 months ago
The "just-ask-your-Twitter-followers" as a replacement for search point is wrong 9 out of 10 times it's presented. That is only a solution if you're asking a question relevant to your batch of followers.
For example, if I have a bunch of followers that are members of my same book club, asking them what web host I should use is like asking them what rocket ship I should buy.
The problem is that search [on Google, Twitter, or any other engine lacking semantic capability] is done without context. For Google, the context is my intent. For Twitter, the context is my follwers.
BrianB
· 7 months ago
There are good points to this post, but who wants inescapable clutter all day all the time? And the chances of getting a stalker on Twitter and actually having that stalker come within striking distance of you is rises up exponentially.
You can't replace the newspaper-reading public (blogs, Google, publicly available websites) with a clique (Twitter) no matter how huge a clique in terms of attracting objective and opposing views.
Srikanth
· 7 months ago
What!
Twitter going to dethrone Google and Email? No way...
I wonder what percent of Google users need real time results. And as for the suggestions from followers, not every one has hundreds of followers with ever useful suggestions. Sooner or later, every company out there is going to embrace twitter and follow public time line for key words and spam us with self-promoting ads [Guy Kawasaki does a similar thing for AllTop.com - http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/11/looking-for... And still, Google might eventually serve the ads on twitter. Who knows?!
And how on earth can twitter replace e-mail? May be it can replace IM. But e-mail? Of course, even Eric Schmidt once described twitter as poor man's email [http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2009/03/04/googles-schmidt-twitter-is-poor-mans-email/] I use them both - but for entirely different purposes.
Dieter Mueller
· 7 months ago
What an odd article. On one side wants to predict the end of certain services and technologies - and on the other it says "No one knows ...".
Please either you write articles with good insights what's going on or not. Anyone with half a brain could have written these "insights". Of course all media usage changes and new technologies will have an impact on older ones. Dah ...
Evolutionary steps in the development of digital habits are bloody obvious. If one technology is better it will kill weaker ones or drive them out of specific channels.
Twitter will hardly replace Google in any way, but it might became the dominant technology for recommendations, comments and general blabla on the net. But Twitter won't crawl huge amounts of web pages, index images and allow complex search requests. And because of it's limited space it's not a tool for complex content anyway. This niche will still belong to articles on websites and blogs.
Shawn Hickman
· 7 months ago
I don't really see Twitter as dethroning these things (except MySpace), but I do think that it is a great complementary tool. If definantly replaces email when it comes to sharing links and short messages, but until you can share files with it email is still better. When it comes to Google, Twitter has it beat with Real Time Search, but Google is still king when in comes to finding things that have already happened. Myspace is just a sinking ship. Great post!
Eric the Reddest
· 7 months ago
Are you on crack? "Dethrone" google search and email?
I hope people didn't pay you money to write this crap.
David
· 7 months ago
And yet another hyped-up story. When will someone write something in-depth about how the service is being used and why people choose to use it or not use it, instead of these lame visions of what Twitter might be leading to (but probably isn't so much).
Even with the loads of folks trying out the service in the last few months, Twitter still is not mainstream and will surely not be everyone's cup of tea, certainly not as the bare service it is right now. Why do self-proclaimed new media gurus always want to tell what services, functionalities and websites are going 'to change the web/world/media as we know it'. Twitter is just one of the many, many interesting developments currently going on. All together, yes together!, those developments will probably have a serious impact. But no, Twitter is not changing the world.
Sigh.
Vashtirama
· 7 months ago
Great post. Too early for me to agree about the "dethroning" part, but I can see the potential: there's something huge behind the seemingly cute and simple Twitter, like an invisible force field. One of the batteries amping the force field, which is often overlooked or underestimated, is that it has an ethical core in direct contrast to Facebook, for example. Even though a % of my twitter followers may be 'passive spammer' types, whereas I interact with 0% spammers in Facebook, I fundamentally trust and feel connected with Twitter as an entity, and not with Facebook.
This trustworthy, ethical core is why I am an ardently loyal participant in a niche-oriented community, www.ravelry.com . (It's for yarn-focused peeps.) It's a social media model that's worth studying.
John H.
· 7 months ago
I demand orthogonality, such that commentary on Twitter be restricted to 140 characters, else showing the commentator just doesn't 'get it'
Search1x.com
· 7 months ago
Great post! I particularly agree that Twitter is changing the search space in that (1) it owns and controls the information that people are freely providing (2) It's ability to provide a convenient platform to capture conversation and then the ability for people to search through realtime conversation is going to be difficult for Google to counter..
Wall_St_Cheat_Sheet
· 7 months ago
You forgot to mention IM'ing. Twitter is a mass texting/IM'ing service (with character limitation).
Great article! Thanks.
david
· 7 months ago
I am new to twitter. It took me a few days to see the possibilities for it, then BANG! It hit me in so many ways. What I find sad, is how so many people really don't know the powerful tool they have. Using it for trivia, dull facts, etc, we all know them.
Obviously that is the ones that will drift. Good! Personallly, I dont see it ever going away, it will evolve. Into what? I dont fully know as not an expert in this stuff. I do think the next stage will involve a lot more video blogs, live chat becoming a big part of it, so it then gives us that ability to really networking, as if we are all in a room together. Breaking into groups etc. It has limitless potential
Laurie Dillon
· 6 months ago
How Twitter is dethroning old guard - great mashable article and comments
Vezquex
· 6 months ago
Wrong x 3:
1. Facebook is the successor to MySpace, not Twitter. 2. Twitter search is largely useless. There is almost no distinct information in the stream, just the same phrases repeated. And as for just asking in a tweet, not everyone has a pool of 20,000 followers to answer questions for them. It's a waste of time to manually answer when Google can actually find what you want from anywhere on the web. It is indexing new content constantly and can show you today's and the past's results. 3. Some people are using Twitter as a primary communication tool, but it is only one among the tons of avenues such as email, IM, and web message boards (including social networks and social news). The stream is filled with so much garbage that you can't have a real discussion without seeing tons of automatically posted updates. Twitter is good to have open in a window and just glance at it occasionally out of boredom, not to be used for actual correspondence.
All Comments
A google/twitter deal seems HIGHLY logical to me and I think the speculation is DEFINITELY worthy of the buzz it got a few weeks ago. Twitter is current buzz. Google is long-term relationships/relevance. I think that Twitter also needs to balance the act of spam vs. let the network grow, which is very intriguing.
Myspace was hurt by spam/false profiles. This was a HUGE turn-off to folks in their 20s/30s and actually helped propel people over to Facebook. Keeping people from being ANNOYED in social networking is a big deal.
I had the same thoughts about e-mail a few weeks ago. How we manage our relationships via "in person", phone, e-mail. social networking, etc. Everyone is a bit different and the noise levels have DEFINITELY increased. I've found people really get annoyed by "the noise" of social networking and it takes time to adapt.
Just my 2 cents. Great article
Dan Ross
http://www.twitter.com/BetterBizIdeas.com
I fully buy into the impact that Twitter is having on existing social networks but I feel that it is a short-term bump in the road. People are trying to determine the right tools to use to communicate their message, Twitter is ideal for some uses, Facebook is great for others. The challenge today is people are trying to use one or two tools and are not using any of them optimally. Again, education in the market, maturity of the users, and potential partnerships between providers will reduce some of these challenges over time.
My two cents.
John Moore
http://twitter.com/JohnFMoore
http://johnfmoore.wordpress.com
Seth - You're a HuffPo blogger, so you should know firsthand the impact of Digg...since HuffPo is perpetually on the front page. Go post this article on Digg, and see the immediate negative comments you'll get from people about Twitter.
Yes, twitter is powerful, and the opportunities endless...but seriously, the overhype about Twitter is setting up a bubble.
Twitter is great, but its potential to wear on those who follow it more out of "fad"nificence and becoming stale is huge. Even more likely some early adopters are feeling put upon by the service's popularity with people wanting to let everyone know they're eating ice cream right this minute. Twitter is a great tool, of its kind it was never the greatest, but it is decent. Media personalities find it a media dream and write about it without being objective I guess because its use can increase page views. Still as a blogger one needs to exemplify some comprehension and understand where you're trying to get ad money from a page view others media properties are making real unadulterated money by providing something that people actually need. There is a difference.
Fact: signups do not sustain media properties. Money does and the fact is Myspace makes more money than Facebook and Twitter maybe even combined. Google of course makes more money than them all. Your article completely misses the point. Myspace makes money because it is a destination to a purpose Music and Videos. Incidentally some of those complaints you have about Myspace is where its making its money. Google makes money because it also meets a need real search. If I want to research a paper am I going to Google or Twitter? You are out to lunch on that. Are you really trying to say that Twitter, a search engine that doesn't yield any results outside of Twitter is going to take down Google? Oh yeah, but Twitter is great for current events as in no relevance tomorrow. Google on the other hand is indexing world + Twitter. One more thing, Twitter is less an authority on anything than even say Wikipedia and that's saying a lot.
Twitter and Facebook are struggling to FIND a way to make money primarily because what they offer is really just email on crack with group chat. Still, email on the internet and chat are FREE and it remains to be seen if people are going to stay with Twitter if they start charging or use ads. Twitter is ubiquitous in nature no doubt, but the question is, aside from consultants, bloggers and media personalities for which Twitter readily has value, what is Twitters real hook for the everyday person.?
When someone wants to see what the latest song is, they go to their computer/cellphone and visit a specialized web property like iTunes or Myspace. Need information, they go to Google. Plan a trip, write a paper or check on the symptoms of swine flu, they go to their computer. You state, as thought it were such a great thing that Twitter users don't have to go to their computer but as cellphones gain better net access less will have to and many don't now. Amazon, Google, Apple, Myspace, Microsoft, CheapTickets and everyone making money will tell you that when their customers sit at the computer/smartphones is when they make money. Twitter and Facebook can't claim this and any businessmen will tell you it's a serious problem. I'm seriously going to stop reading Mashable if this kind of "reporting" continues.
In that case, you missed our most popular article this week: http://mashable.com/2009/04/28/twitter-quitters/
Twitter is a presence technology that allows me to "update" my followers about my current activities without them having to go to directly to my Myspace or Facebook page. Yet, no one is looking at entire picture albums or blogs for that matter on Twitter. Why because Twitter is an assistive technology. It augments Facebook and Myspace and proper blogs, which aren't really suited to realtime, nor the mobile form factor. Also the untold millions that don't have blogs are given a voice by Twitter, which allows those of us to that choose to to snoop on people we follow without having to interact with them. Truth is, the early precursor to Twitter is "Growl" posting Sender and Subject information as emails hit your inbox only the growl notifications are not computer bound. Twitter has not the capacity to replace any of the other social media types and the sooner Mashable, Facebook and Myspace figure this out the better. Google is the "GoTo" on Search period. Twitter is the "Goto" on Twitter only, how could it possible replace Google. It can not. Seriously, people writing about this need a better grasp of technologies and the metaphors enabled by them.
For example, if I have a bunch of followers that are members of my same book club, asking them what web host I should use is like asking them what rocket ship I should buy.
The problem is that search [on Google, Twitter, or any other engine lacking semantic capability] is done without context. For Google, the context is my intent. For Twitter, the context is my follwers.
You can't replace the newspaper-reading public (blogs, Google, publicly available websites) with a clique (Twitter) no matter how huge a clique in terms of attracting objective and opposing views.
Twitter going to dethrone Google and Email?
No way...
I wonder what percent of Google users need real time results. And as for the suggestions from followers, not every one has hundreds of followers with ever useful suggestions. Sooner or later, every company out there is going to embrace twitter and follow public time line for key words and spam us with self-promoting ads [Guy Kawasaki does a similar thing for AllTop.com - http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/11/looking-for... And still, Google might eventually serve the ads on twitter. Who knows?!
And how on earth can twitter replace e-mail? May be it can replace IM. But e-mail? Of course, even Eric Schmidt once described twitter as poor man's email [http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2009/03/04/googles-schmidt-twitter-is-poor-mans-email/]
I use them both - but for entirely different purposes.
Please either you write articles with good insights what's going on or not. Anyone with half a brain could have written these "insights". Of course all media usage changes and new technologies will have an impact on older ones. Dah ...
Evolutionary steps in the development of digital habits are bloody obvious. If one technology is better it will kill weaker ones or drive them out of specific channels.
Twitter will hardly replace Google in any way, but it might became the dominant technology for recommendations, comments and general blabla on the net. But Twitter won't crawl huge amounts of web pages, index images and allow complex search requests. And because of it's limited space it's not a tool for complex content anyway. This niche will still belong to articles on websites and blogs.
I hope people didn't pay you money to write this crap.
Even with the loads of folks trying out the service in the last few months, Twitter still is not mainstream and will surely not be everyone's cup of tea, certainly not as the bare service it is right now. Why do self-proclaimed new media gurus always want to tell what services, functionalities and websites are going 'to change the web/world/media as we know it'. Twitter is just one of the many, many interesting developments currently going on. All together, yes together!, those developments will probably have a serious impact. But no, Twitter is not changing the world.
Sigh.
This trustworthy, ethical core is why I am an ardently loyal participant in a niche-oriented community, www.ravelry.com . (It's for yarn-focused peeps.) It's a social media model that's worth studying.
(1) it owns and controls the information that people are freely providing
(2) It's ability to provide a convenient platform to capture conversation and then the ability for people to search through realtime conversation is going to be difficult for Google to counter..
Great article! Thanks.
Obviously that is the ones that will drift. Good! Personallly, I dont see it ever going away, it will evolve. Into what? I dont fully know as not an expert in this stuff. I do think the next stage will involve a lot more video blogs, live chat becoming a big part of it, so it then gives us that ability to really networking, as if we are all in a room together. Breaking into groups etc. It has limitless potential
1. Facebook is the successor to MySpace, not Twitter.
2. Twitter search is largely useless. There is almost no distinct information in the stream, just the same phrases repeated. And as for just asking in a tweet, not everyone has a pool of 20,000 followers to answer questions for them. It's a waste of time to manually answer when Google can actually find what you want from anywhere on the web. It is indexing new content constantly and can show you today's and the past's results.
3. Some people are using Twitter as a primary communication tool, but it is only one among the tons of avenues such as email, IM, and web message boards (including social networks and social news). The stream is filled with so much garbage that you can't have a real discussion without seeing tons of automatically posted updates. Twitter is good to have open in a window and just glance at it occasionally out of boredom, not to be used for actual correspondence.