Is Twitter Becoming a Victim of Its Own Popularity?
While Twitter started out as a microblogging service, it has become a platform. A social messaging platform, and a social media marketing platform, and a news briefs platform, and a job-finding platform are among many other varied uses for Twitter.
But is it becoming a little too popular?
Retweets are becoming all the rage, and in many cases, retweets are vital to the conversation. When someone sends you a message and you retweet it along with the response, everyone gets to follow the discussion. And retweeting an especially witty or insightful message is also great.
Even recommending a particularly good article is fine. However, when I see badges on articles counting the number of times it has been tweeted, I think we are taking it a bit far. There is already a lot of noise on Twitter, so I worry that using it to replace Digg might be taking it a bit far.
Twitter games are another area where Twitter might be victimized by its own popularity. While games like Spymaster can be a lot of fun, they are also going to lead to a lot of noise. And once everyone is playing as a mafia boss, vampire or spy and retweeting articles, we might lose sight of the conversation.
And yet, it is the ability to do all of these things that makes Twitter such a great tool in the first place. So, perhaps, we are just forcing Twitter to bring groups and channels into the service rather than leave these aspects for third-party Twitter clients.
I wouldn’t want twitter to follow the same route as Facebook … I am tired of being invited to accept ”gifts” and join games I have no idea about and no wish to play … Twitter should remain just as it is and what it was designed for …
Citing items from Twitter as authoritative goes much too far. If you want the leading state-of-the-art knowledge in some field of work, cite a refereed journal. Information posted on Blogs or Twitter or wherever Internet are not validated by subject experts as are refereed technical journals in any field and they should all be taken with the proverbial “grain of salt”. There are some great communicators in the world whose output on blogs, twitter or similar are only opinion, possibly having nothing to do with truth or accepted body of knowledge. Often readers mistake fiction as fact.
I look at Twitter as just a start up that hasn’t even begun to see its potential. If one can see the inherit possibilities of what may happen with it. it could potentially become a major player in the communications industry if it merged with a giant such as google. Indexing, banking, location sensitive ad placement, market trading, business in general could all be transformed in new ways. So I dont think Twitter is just a passing phase. It is just right now, a cute distraction.
Not To Worry … Get Ready For
Google’s The Wave
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ
I’m sorry, but I’m old fashioned, I still do not know what Twitter is…??? I’m just starting to learn a bit about Facebook.
i think twitter is an awesome way that i communicate with friends and other people, whether they are in a band or on tv shows, i can still keep in touch with them… all of my closest friends have twitters because i got them hooked… we keep in touch when we are away from home and we enjoy talking about stuff over the internet so we dont have to see each other’s reactions…
I have found Twitter to be a great way to network. I’ve stumbled on excellent links to informative subjects that I may not have readily found on my own. I also use it to promote myself. Anyone who can write a solid, succinct post in 140 characters is ok in my book. As a beginning freelance writer I feel I want to know a little about alot of things, and the community of Twitter helps in that goal.
@Johnny
This should explain twitter…
http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=twitter
My first book was recently published. It is about young adult cancer. Twitter is one of the main ways I connect with my readers. While some people use Twitter to talk about what flavor doughnut they ate on a coffee break, I used it today to get scores of twenty and thirty-somethings to call their senators and ask them to do away with pre-existing condition exclusions. Much like a telephone – it is not the machine that is of importance, but the message that you put into it.
I think twitter is just the beginning of a new form of communicating that is here to stay.
I am 58 years old and remember the days of taking a lot of time to write my thoughts in a letter to someone. It would take up to 5 days for them to get it and I would get a response 5 days later. It Wasn’t a bad thing as you got quality not speed. The world moved slower in those days and I miss that. I have been on Twitter and Facebook and can’t find any use for it for me. I don’t care what someone had for breakfast. There are many things in this world that are more important to me, than to be constantly keep busy by a computer. Just my thoughts.
What kind of moronic article was that? You’re an idiot.
@Don
That’s great that you write letters. Continue to do so if that works for you. Assuming today’s faster forms of communication is lacking in quality probably isn’t fair though. Maybe it can be, but 140 characters doesn’t necessarily make Twitter and quality mutually exclusive.
I can also understand that you might not care about what someone had for breakfast. Some people do care. Some might clasify it as conversation, albeit broadcasted conversation. Un-follow that twitter if it’s not working for you. Not everything on Twitter is about what people had for breakfast.
Your comment reminds me about what people said about email (or the Internet for that matter): “if I want to talk to someone, I’ll call them”. I can imagine similar hesitations with any new technology.
Granted the jury may still be out regarding Twitter but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t experiment with it.
I’m gonna tweet this article
The comment by (12) Pete tends to reinforce my belief as a medical and sports scientist, that the (current generation of young people) this is the first generation where many of them will be buried by their parents.
Why? Lack of real activity, eating of garbage food. An inability to value the important things in this universe.
People who spend much of their time playing with the latest, must have, electronic gadget,are invariably obese and unhealthy.
Get off your fat butts and get outside to a running, cycling, boot camp, rowing, weightlifting session. There now, Pete, No need to twitter your brain cells away !!!..
Popularity always has a down side! Twitter is a revolution