Is Twitter toast?

Filed under: Internet, Blogging, Social Software

Is Twitter toast?

by Grant Robertson Mar 14th 2007

Twitter has been spreading like wildfire of late, and it seems as if everyone from the tech elite to the tech illiterate have signed on to post snippets from places blogging had previously yet to tread. Is Twitter's growth sustainable? Maybe; As the A-list trumpet Twitter's success, web1979 makes a pretty convincing argument for why Twitter isn't going to last the year.

Mat Belez writes, "There is no substance to the house of cards that is Twitter. No deep content, nothing to learn, no reason to keep coming back to the trough, other than the thrill/obsession of pre-adolescent voyeurism - which is simply not reason enough for busy professionals."

Is Twitter a case of becoming web-cool simply because all the cool kids are doing it? Although I've recently succumbed to the Twitter bug, I'm still unsure why I do it. , when an early adopter friend told me about Twitter last summer, my first question was, "Why would you want to do that?"

Tags: mat belez, MatBelez, twitter, web 20, web1979, Web20

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

A.Ulloa said 12:02AM on 3-15-2007

Not sure if it's going to last. In a way I really do not care when people twitter that it is time to go to the toilet. But there are some funny one's to read like www.twitter.com/billclinton and www.twitter.com/darthvader

So if you like to read funny one's pretending to be someone else....then maybe it will last for a little while.

roarkg said 2:47AM on 3-15-2007

when myspace and facebook die, that's when twitter dies.

Robert Sanzalone said 5:13AM on 3-15-2007

Not even close. When I first saw Twitter I thought "who wants to know when I (or someone else) gets up, eats, goes to bed, etc." when I saw how relevant tweets were made (new discoveries, first hand news such as earthquakes, etc.) I realized this was big AND has a business side. For those who can't see it, the light bulb still hasn't turned on. Don't worry. They said the same about blogs.

Sergio said 8:37AM on 3-15-2007

I side with Robert here, 100%. Additionally, taliking about "busy professionals," if your profession is related to serving people, you have the obligation to stay on top of what these very same people are into. You may not like twitter, but it's to your advantage to understand it and keep trying hard to figure out why so many people are flocking around it. Eventually that light bulb mentioned by Robert will be bright and shinny.

Steve said 9:37AM on 3-15-2007

If you haven't really used it, then there's no way to understand it. And maybe it's not necessarily a tool for busy professionals, and that's OK. I think a lot of people are trying to mold Twitter as a productivity tool to justify the amount of time they spend with it during the day, but that's not really what it is.

Besides, if substance and deep content were required for anything to be successful, American idol would have been cancelled years ago. It's fine for web1979 to not like the service, but that doesn't mean it's doomed.

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