The Demise of the Dim Twitts.

Posted by Nate

May 29, 2008

I just read a super duper interesting article on All Things SEM. It talked about the viral, yet non-sustaining nature Twitter has created. Among the reasons for Twitter’s eventual demise are the following

Twits are not valuable (after writing that sentence, I laughed…so true! The less Twits the better). The argument is that posts to Twitter, although entertaining, do not offer anything of value for the consumer reading them.
Twits are transient. Emails give you a solid way to keep and communicate. Blogs allow you to come and go as you please and to get information by searching in a search engine. Twits on the other hand are too short for anything relevant and can be easily bumped and therefore unseen by other readers because of the next batch of Twits posted.
140 characters isn’t enough to say anything relevant anyway. When you have to send 20 SMS text messages to get your point across, it ain’t worth it!
It’s a waste of time. You can find yourself going through ridiculous amounts of Twits and not realizing you wasted over two hours. The sad thing is that during that time you were reading, but nothing of consequence was in anything you read.
Too many people. It’s impossible to keep up with everyone on there once the numbers get large enough. The argument is that, once the crowd talking gets large enough, you’ll only really pay attention to those you associated with previous to Twitter anyway. Too many people in a conversation will make you disinterested.
You’ve a higher chance of being ignored when you post a response on Twitter than you do on a blog. This may be partly due to the aforementioned reasons. Whatever the reason, one way conversations simply about what you’re doing gets old.

Now, I can see from Marios’ point of view why these things may be true. I want to address a couple of them though and talk about how I think Twitter is beneficial. First, it’s viral and addictive. He gives the reason that it’s a waste of time. Well, so is television and 99% of what’s online. It doesn’t mean companies have not found a way to monetize those digital media mediums. I know plenty of people who waste hours a day on Facebook and yet Facebook is still worth billions according to investors. So, if “time wasting” on the consumers’ side means “lack of value” on the business side, we’re all in big trouble.

Second, too many people on there may be an issue, but it’s great for Twitter. Google released an article sometime ago where they talked about traffic being power. The more eyes you have looking at your wares, the greater chance you have for conversion and revenue.

Finally, just think for a second about viral, waste of time activities where money is being made. I wrote an article a while back about Twitter’s advertising testing. If they find a way to get people connected virally and use that virality to serve up some ads in the process, then it’s genius! Who knows, maybe Marios is right and maybe the model is not sustainable. Only time will tell if the Twits will last.

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