Is this the beginning of the end for Twitter?

Posted by David Whitehouse

Do you think Twitter will be around in 5 years time? I don’t. It’s growth is starting to wane as you see less and less people are searching for Twitter, if you look at the graph below it shows the number of searches for Twitter on Google – it isn’t increasing, which means that its user base perhaps isn’t increasing the way it should.
twitter-growth-plateau

If you compare this graph to the typical problem faced by growing technology companies, if you ask me Twitter seems to be stuck, it doesn’t look like its growing at an exponential rate – according to the graph above, the same number of people will be joining the network each month.

New users aren’t tweeting and aren’t inviting people

Ok so perhaps you think that because people are joining each month still, it therefore must still be growing, well unfortunately these people aren’t getting their friends to join, in fact a lot of people are only tweeting once and then never returning to the site (I’ve got a number of non “tech” friends who have done this). There has even been a study proving this.  Lets face it, what is the point?  Really…

Can’t invite people within a tweet

Once you sign up with Twitter, there isn’t really that many reasons for you to invite someone again, and there isn’t a “smooth” way to do so. If they were to introduce functionality to automatically email non-twitter users when you tweet about them, then perhaps I could see them growing.

Twitter is rapidly becoming obsolete

Now lets compare Twitter for Facebook. Twitter largely came about because it took what Facebook did and made it simple to do on the mobile phone, but with mobile broadband rapidly becoming the norm, this functionality isn’t going to be necessary as people will be able to browse their already existing friend network on Facebook. Twitter doesn’t offer any (or hardly any) advantages for the user over Facebook, and Facebook can quite easily release a few new features that would finish off any competitive advantage Twitter may have.

They aren’t making money and they never will

Finally they aren’t monetizing the site, and with other sponsored tweet services already started up the only way I can see them monetizing it is with interruption marketing. They just aren’t gonna get the money they need to keep this thing going.

In summary Twitter is screwed

So to summarise:

  1. New users aren’t spreading the word
  2. There isn’t a way to invite new users in a tweet
  3. New users aren’t tweeting
  4. Mobile broadband will make Twitter’s only competitive advantage obsolete
  5. Facebook has a pre-existing network of “practical” users
  6. They don’t look like they are gonna get much money

So all you people out there best watch out, cos there is going to be a real vacuum when the bottom falls out of this one.

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4 Comments »

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  1. Your right in saying Twitter may very well die, or it’s audience reduce to serve only a few niche markets. But I can’t see Facebook regaining Twitter users en mass.

    Facebook is essentially too noisy, it’s trying to be everything whilst it’s the simplicity of Twitter that I like, I know exactly what I get with Twitter. It’s also the speed of information on Twitter through it’s 3rd party apps that give it a competitive edge over Facebook.

    The people I follow in Twitter is also very different to that in Facebook. Facebook is full of people I know and have met, a place to stalk the nearest and dearest. But on Twitter it’s different, instead I have people I haven’t met but follow because they work in my industry or are interesting. There’s little overlap of people that appear in both my streams.

    As I use Twitter to find stuff out rather than just post what I’m doing I can’t see Facebook ever taking over.

    Comment by Kean — September 11, 2009 #

  2. Good point dude, I also have a very different network of friends to Twitter, like you they are people I haven’t met, or people I work with.

    Comment by David Whitehouse — September 11, 2009 #

  3. Good points but typo in heading mate!!

    Have to agree, I was a late twitter adopter. I stopped it after recently moving house and have found myself much more productive.

    Next.

    Comment by Andy — September 12, 2009 #

  4. Yeah I suppose it is just another way to waste time!

    Comment by David Whitehouse — September 13, 2009 #

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