Three years ago I wrote this blog post on the “end” of Twitter. Three years later Twitter is bigger than ever…
Was I wrong?
No in that article I wrote
One day we will no longer be using Twitter and when that is, no one really knows…
To be honest I did think it would happen in the next few years, but it didn’t, the Twitter just moved forward and got bigger. Will it get bigger and bigger?
I doubt it, but though I was wrong before, well we need to remember that the online audience is fickle and sometimes we do move on. The relaunch of MySpace recently reminds us that once it was the “big” thing that everyone did. Have you gone and created an account on MySpace, revived your old account, or have just gone “meh”. Never thought I would ever use the phrase “meh” in a blog post, I must be getting old as I even have no idea how to pronounce it. I try and avoid using the online stuff such as LOL, OMG, Fail, Epic Fail and “meh”. Why don’t I use that kind of thing, well I always think that when someone of my age uses that stuff, it’s though as I am trying to be hip and in with the young people.
Well talking of young people, at my college we have noticed a distinct shift by the young people from Facebook to the Twitter. Despite Facebook announcing a billion accounts, a lot of people I speak to, are still on Facebook, but are using it less, or using it as a way of organising stuff rather than engaging on the site itself. Is the drop in Facebook’s revenue is indicative of a fall in engagement by users, even though the number of users has gone up?
So with some Facebook users moving to Twitter, why on earth am I writing about the decline and eventual fall of Twitter?
Well there are some things that Twitter are doing to the Twitter that are annoying and frustrating long term users and developers. The shift to move users from third party applications to the web site and the increase in promoted tweets is also quite annoying.
We have also seen changes to how the Twitter API can be used, an example of this was the abrupt end to how IFTTT could be used with the Twitter.
If this focus on mainstream users continue (because that is where the money is) I can expect to see long term and dedicated users leave when something new and better comes along, though at this time there doesn’t appear to be an alternative. Part of the reason that I don’t think there is an alternative, is that people are expecting the alternative to be a clone of Twitter. That isn’t how it has worked in the past. If you remember Facebook wasn’t MySpace or Bebo, and Twitter isn’t a Facebook clone either. Where we go after the Twitter, may be around already, but it won’t be a Twitter clone.
Once the long term and dedicated users have moved to a new and different service, Twitter will be reliant on the mainstream users who are a lot more fickle. They’ve moved before, they will move again.
We don’t know what the next big thing will be after Twitter, but if there is a pattern to this kind of thing it won’t look like or be like Twitter.
You could be using it already…
