I envy Twitter. If you think that doesn’t matter, then read through this article. In my own opinion, the miracle of Twitter’s exponential growth should not even exist in a fair world. Why I say “Twitter is not supposed to be so successful”?, check it out below.
Reason 1: Rubbish original idea – “Let others know what you are doing”
Why? This is because even basic updates are meaningful to family members, friends, or colleagues—especially when they’re timely.
* Eating soup? Research shows that only moms want to know.
* Running late to a meeting? Your co–workers might find that useful.
* Partying? Your friends may want to join you.
Can you imagine the probability of the scenes? Actually Jack was imaging miracles! I am not looking down on Jack, but I cannot believe he can use these ideas to run such a successful business.
Why Twitter has emerged from just a simple SMS service to a successful and popular social networking platform? Besides the presence and influence of notable web entreprenuers and celebrities, its users are creative and invent their own ways of managing their Twitter accounts by not following the original boring idea of finding out what your friends are actually doing. In the past, Twitter is a simple micro-blogging platform for people to share their daily lives with others. However, now it has turned into a social platform for users to share their blog articles, in a bid to garner more potential readers to their websites.
Reason 2: Against the “Long Tail Theory”
In the older generation of web, business was still following the “80:20 theory”, which simply means that “20% of users earn you 80% of the money”, “20% of users create 80% of content” or “20% of products create 80% of revenue”. However in today’s Web 2.o, everyone is possible to publish content, and everyone is able to make money in the Internet with marketing, and these have led to “Long Tail Theory“. This theory states that the rest 80% of users or products become important again in Web 2.o.
All thanks to Web 2.o, the Long Tail – 80% of them became active again. But Twitter is doing things against the “Long Tail Theory”, Twitter is always promoting the popular ones, then we can say, 20% of users gain 80% of relationships. Twitter also encourages you tweet, of course, then 20% of users post 80% of tweets.
The folks at Twitter are not really good at dealing with inactive accounts, resulting in several serious problems.
Reason 3: Small Company Strategy
I don’t know why, but Twitter is depending on so many web services. Without Google Analytics, Twitter cannot track their traffic statistics. Without reCAPTCHA, new users cannot sign up. Without Google Code, Twitter will not have jQuery and Prototype library which are necessary for webpage loading. Without Amazon S3, all images cannot be displayed. Also, the Twitter Wiki, Twitter Helpdesk and so many platforms are depending on other companies too.
I don’t know if this is a good strategy, but it will be quite easy for Google or Amazon to kill Twitter. Besides that, Twitter will never be the first as the micro-blogging platform is depending on Google too much. Now Facebook is almost independent, except for the CDN which is powered by Akamai.
Reason 4: Lack in Business Models
There is a fact that basically everyone agrees. Twitter has not earned a single buck yet when it was first officially launched on March 21 2006. When the media ask the key personnel – Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and Biz Stone why Twitter is not generating any revenue and relies on investments to support the platform, most of the time you will get the same reply – “We are focusing on our services.” This is NOT business.
If they really want to focus on services, then can make Twitter be Non-Profit and receive donations. As for now, everyone cannot predict the future of business models, then how the venture capitals are able to invest in one of the simplest Web 2.0 platform on the Internet even without assuring that Twitter will definitely become popular? From my personal view, venture capitals concentrate a lot on the Business Models when they invest in Internet Projects, so how is it possible to invest a company which does not have any plan for business? Where is the future? How can investors make money?
However, this statement can be contradicted by Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim, who has written a check for $100,000 to an entity that doesn’t exist yet: a company called Google Inc. in August 1998. Google has now emerged from a school project to an international search engine used by millions of Internet users worldwide.
Reason 5: Lack in ability to deal with issues
When hackers break through Twitter, the staff have to work together for a quite long time and what’s more is that they do not have enough experience in dealing with emergency cases. For example, the Twitter Worm which is an XSS case.
Also, you may have read lots of rants about the inactive user issue. Actually I have lodged a complaint too as my prefer username which has been already registered is currently not in use. The folks at Twitter never even bother to spare some time to mass remove inactive accounts.
Besides that, SPAM is something Twitter hates the most. Last week, one of my Twitter Accounts – @RandomReTweet has been suspended. I did not received any explanation via email about this issue and they just do the things they want to do, and do not concern more. @RandomReTweet is actually a Twitterbot, which RT tweets from its followers randomly. I am not sure if it is against the ToS but Twitter suspended it when the number of followers has just reached 8,000. Can you imagine that a Twitter Account with 8,000 followers can be suspended? Twitter has no brains!
Conclusion: Twitter is not supposed to be so successful
If you think Twitter is a platform, then it have succeeded. But if you think Twitter is a business, then it haven’t succeeded yet. In my own opinion, Twitter is not supposed to be so successful due to the 5 reasons above. There are lots of people out there who love Twitter, who hate Twitter and even who envy Twitter. I admit that I fall under the third category – those who envy Twitter. Of course without the help from users, popular stars, investors, medias and the popularity of co-founders, Twitter may only be an simple idea that even a small kid could have thought of it.
If you are the one who also envy Twitter, please join in the fun. My Twitter account is http://twitter.com/Pathway8. If you have anything else to say, or have different views from mine, don’t hide it in your heart, comment below…