Created by 4 wonderful team members, Twitter has surprisingly emerged to one of the world’s most popular micro-blogging platform with about 30 million tweets posted by 4-5 million active users every month without any money-making business model in hand. So what makes it so “hot” and will its traditional “What Are You Doing?” so-called slogan be eliminated in the years to come and transform to a Digg/StumbleUpon-like style?
Why the 140 characters or less tweeting style has attracted millions of users worldwide is because of the excessive media coverage by CNN, BBC and New York Times. Also, a decent number of world-class celebrities such as Barack Obama, Kevin Rose, Stephen Fry, Lance Armstrong and Britney Spears using Twitter has turned avid fans into followers. However it seems that most followers of these celebrities fall under the “Not So Active” group whereby they don’t really post tweets that often and don’t even bother changing the default thumbnail into a personalized one. Twitter’s Japanese version is indeed a success with thousands of tech-savvy Japanese using it since it first started on April 22, 2008.
Even though the core of Twitter is simply allowing Twitterers to either share their social life or tell their friends “What Are You Doing Now?”, however this traditional style is moving towards to a Digg/StumbleUpon platform of posting and sharing interesting links with others. In this case, it’s called Re-Tweeting. From my observation, a huge majority of Twitter users (popular ones includes Robert Scobleizer and Guy Kawasaki) tends to share links more often than posting “pure” tweets such as a short sentence saying “I’m at the London Heathrow Airport now…Heading to Paris for a Business Trip”.
What Twitter Will Be Like Ten Years Later:
Its traditional focus of “What Are You Doing?” will still remains intact as a significant number of celebrities will join the network soon to increase their fan base. From several timelines of celebrities which I’ve observed, it’s quite rare to see them sharing links or retweeting them. However, retweets will continue to be a common sight on the public timeline because the social Web is expanding at an exponential rate. Hence, the conclusion is that Twitter is currently moving from “What Are You Doing?” to a Digg/StumbleUpon sharing style but not completely. It definitely won’t happen!
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You thinking too far. Do not think of 10yrs latter. Twitter won’t go that far even if it is increasing with nice pace. There will be some new service which will blow it out.
If Twitter becomes something like digg, its not good. I would not like people voting my tweet. I want people to read my tweet, appreciate it and reply back.
Twitter is the new “text messaging service” but limited on the online perspective unless twitter taps the telecom companies and receive ’sms’ from them and posted on twitter.
I like to keep the feeling in the twitter I feel like it is a gift to me with my business which is cash gifting. I feel like people are giving of their time and energy to create the great community of twitter http://www.thegoodgiver.com
Facebook is copying twitter so twitter should not change because the website has the momentum
There are moments when I feel like the only interesting thing I have2say IS the fact that I’ve just discovered an interesting link. It kind of annoys me, actually, when people say: “Oh do more about you, I don’t feel like I’m geting to know you, come out and share more about you” when:
(1) I am posting all I can honestly think of2say,
(2) sharing something I noticed that I found interesting IS saying something about myself as far as I’m concerned, and
(3) the “things I’m doing” are-roughly speaking-the same dxmn things I did last week, and it’s gonna bore the heck out of someone else. It’s not my fault that I’m not a wealthy celebrity doing a new thing in a new place every nanosecond.
People are so freakin’ shallow. Anyhow, . . . um, yeah
Xavier,
Great article! I also think Twitter’s “What Are You Doing” core function will continue to serve throughout it’s lifetime. As for their model, hmmm, I get the feeling that they kind of new that people would use their service to share links, media, and other information. Clearly the genius of Twitter IS it’s simplicity, and I believe the Twitter team is well aware of that. Their very careful with how they role up their design and features updates, which indicates to me how in tune they are with core twitters. As far as money-making/business model, Twitter will offer advanced services for businesses, and will also likely offer optional services for regular uses to choose from. Naturally, these services will be at a relatively minimal monthly fee.
Hey, here’s an interesting article (similar subject) I wrote:
http://www.blamethecritic.com/blamethecritic/2009/02/twitter-the-toothpaste-myspace-the-walkman.html
-Sa’id (follow me on Twitter: @amirsaid)