Do you tweet? Like MyFace, Spacebook and LinkedIn before it, Twitter is the new 'micro-blogging', social-networking phenomenon that has taken on a life of its own over the past few months.
Millions of people worldwide are literally falling over themselves to tell anyone who cares (people rather poignantly called 'followers') what they are having for dinner, why they prefer Coke over Pepsi and all about their overseas trips planned for 2022, all within 140 characters. What is perhaps more surprising is that there appears to be many people out there who are interested in the fact that you're having Crème Brulée for dessert.
Not me though.
But enough about me (you can read all about ME on my Twitter feed). The reality is that, from Oprah Winfrey and that other 'celebrity' Ashton Kutcher, to mainstream media outlets, Twitter is attracting a wide and diverse audience and is 'so hot right now'.
But will it last? An interesting study has just been released by Nielsen Online suggesting that, contrary to all the hype surrounding Twitter, the service's retention rates are not as high as one might think and that perhaps peoples' lives just aren't that interesting to warrant regular, on-the-hour, often trivial updates. The Nielsen Online study suggests that more than 60 per cent of US Twitter users fail to return month-on-month and that Twitter's retention rate is approximately 40 per cent, compared to retention rates of 50-60 per cent for Facebook and MySpace when they were in their early stages of growth.
I once had a Myspace page, and it was fun ... for a little while. Then I grew tired of people spamming me with invites to parties on the other side of the world and strangers extending their hand of 'friendship' only for me to be a mere number to whom they could send their junk. Before I knew it, months had passed since I had logged in. Now I can't even remember my password.
All social networking services need to evolve in order to hold their users' attention. The trouble is that Twitter can't, in its present form, really evolve much more without becoming something completely different and thus losing the appeal that attracted so many people to it in the first place. Remember the uproar when Facebook redesigned its user interface a few months ago? Feedback was so scathing that the powers that be were forced to release several statements, including this one:
'The new Facebook home page is one step in the continued evolution of the site, designed to give people more ways to share and filter all types of content, such as status updates, photos, videos, notes and more. We are grateful to have 175 million people worldwide using Facebook to connect with the people and things they care about most, and we take their feedback very seriously.'
Facebook didn't take its users' feedback so seriously, however, to backdown completely and revert to its original layout. The whole debacle did demonstrate that Facebook, in contrast to Twitter, has more nous to hold its users, regardless of what changes it makes to its Terms Of Service (which previously included questions over who actually owns your content once it is uploaded to Facebook, just one of many reasons why I don't have a Facebook profile). Then again, it might be a little unfair to compare a glorified online short message service (SMS) like Twitter to Facebook, which allows your friends, colleagues and peers to see just how many pints you downed at the local on the weekend, and the rather unfortunate events that followed.
Time will tell whether Twitter can hold its new bevy of devotees but any uncertainty doesn't appear to have dampened Apple's spirits, who have reportedly entered into talks to purchase Twitter for a rumoured US$700 million; not a bad price to learn what people like to have on their sandwiches.
What do you think? Are you a fan or foe of Twitter? And what might be the next big thing in social time-wasting? Leave a comment below; 140 characters only please!
Image courtesy of: dayglowill
I agree with what you said. Time will tell how these groups evolve, for some the pace is not real and they do take a lot of energy to maintain the contributions and connections. Thank you.