Twitter is Peaking

Twitter traffic data from comScore (via TechCrunch)

I have been active Twitter user since January 2007. And it's been remarkable just how much it has changed since.

In the last six months, Twitter has gone nuclear. There are three reasons why and I explore them in this post. However, they also point to why Twitter is about to jump the shark and we should begin asking ourselves what's "the next big thing."

As long as Twitter maintains a following I feel every business should join it and converse with their customers - just as I said a year ago. Still, it's always important for everyone to see the big picture. That's why predicting a market top is something I thoroughly enjoy doing. In part, it's what I am paid to do - think about what's next. This disicipline keeps me and others like Robert Scoble like from getting stale.

In December 2006 when Evan Williams first showed me Twitter in the back of a cab in Seattle, I thought it was going nowhere. But after I played with it, I got hooked. My early fascination with Twitter began because, like now, I was scanning the horizon for what's next. I sensed that in late 2006 that blogging was cresting. Twitter replaced it for me and, later, millions. Now the same can be said about RSS, which many of the early adopters who first embraced it have also now ceremoniously dumped. (More on RSS in a subsequent post.)

As I have written before, no community has ever had staying power. Twitter right now is poised to fall victim to the same trend. Let's take a look at three reasons why Twitter has witnessed incredible growth, all of which point to why the service is peaking right now. (Note: Many of you will disagree. Daniel Terdiman today wrote that at SXSW, Twitter was the new Twitter.)

1) Celebs Flocked to Twitter - Just six months ago, the list of the top 100 users on Twitter read like a who's who of geeks. That's what made it a draw, for many, initially. Now, however, the list looks like People or US Magazine. Twitter is losing it's geek creds as celebs flock to the service.

Historically, as the geeks go, so goes social media. I believe that the Founding Fathers and Mothers of Twitter - people who gave the service it's wings, will soon tire of it and seek the next shiny object. Already, Dave Winer is playing with Jaiku. Scoble is deep into Friendfeed. I am finding a lot more value these days in both Friendfeed and Facebook, which leads me to my next point.

2) Twitter is Disorganized - Twitter attracted a following because it's disorganized. Since replies are not threaded, celebs and corporations do not feel they have to respond to every Tweet. It's a tree in the forrest thing. There are no comments to moderate. And this makes it more attractive than blogging.

However, what was once "a feature" could begin to be seen as "a bug" and lead us to seek more organization. As Jeff Jarvis explains in his book What Would Google Do, other services like Facebook and Google provide elegant organization. This is something Friendfeed does well too. It's also a big reason why Tweetdeck is succeeding. Twitter would be wise to acquire Tweetdeck now before someone else does, especially as it adds more social tentacles.

3) Twitter is a Mile Wide but an Inch Deep - Brevity rules on Twitter. And this has encouraged time-starved celebrities and corporate types to jump into Twitter much more so than blogging. It also supports anonymity. You can be "a corporation" on Twitter, which you really can't do with a blog. Here people want to see the faces.

However, as Twitter grows and people begin to crave reading Tweets from personalities and others they trust, I wonder if they will want a deeper relationship - one with less anonymity. This is something other services, notably Friendfeed and Facebook, do well. You can use either to create a community around all your stuff, not just 140-character tweets. Also, I suspect they will want to weed signal from noise. Right now that's tough to do.

So you heard it here first, folks. Twitter is peaking. Now I believe Twitter can get through "the dip" that stares them in the face, but it will need to adapt by: keeping its core users intact, remaining attractive to corporations and celebs and by becoming more organized. Search will help with the latter, but expect a battle as Facebook and Friendfeed both make a concerted push to become the place for all your social stuff.

Comments

[Prokofy Neva]

I think it's certainly peeking for Geeks. Second Life people, already soaking in technology, are very early adapters, we were on Twitter (thanks to your tip). A lot of them have now migrated to Plurk because it allows for sustained, threaded conversations and has a karma/reputation system which some people like. Yes, Scoble went to Friendfeed, and is using Twitter merely to springboard people over to FriendFeed to have more coherent conversations, but that's also to manage people by blocking and deleting and filtering them. Social media systems will keep resisting the efforts of the A-listers to do that, and their efforts to screen out even coherent backtalk.

I agree that Twitter supports anonymity, and that can be a mixed blessing. What's more important that actual linkage of an avatar to a RL name is a predictable pattern of behaviour and a judgement on behaviour and speech as such.

Right now, I'm talking to the President of Russia. Yes, he's on Twitter. Um, yeah, I suspect that's not really him, because I tested him and he responded instantly with an irate comment; the real president of Russia presumably has better things to do with his time than tweet all day about how smoking should be banned on ORT. And that's just it -- despite a very authentic look, we can't tell if this "Dmitry Medvedev" showing his website as "kremlin.ru" is the real deal. The one missing killer Twitter app is an authentication identification service.

Celebs and A-listers could be taking advantage of Twitter that actually protects them from too-adoring fans or too hateful back-talkers, but instead they scurry to either use follow-block or filter in Tweetdeck or ignore, trying to turn social media, a conversation tool, into a broadcasting device.

There isn't a next big thing after Twitter, however. Even for Scoble, FriendFeed only has life and meaning because of the simplicity and ease of Twitter. So Twitter will add more filters to help A-listers who demand it to broadcast, and social media revolutionaries will move elsewhere, as they moved off blogs, but they will live in exile.

[alison@amoreradiantyou.com]

You can't possibly make the claim that "twitter attracted a following because it's disorganized". Nothing more annoying than "experts" who write ridiculous statements as if they're facts with absolutely no specific data to back up the statements.

[Zoe]

As a relatively new user to twitter, and someone that is trying to get the hang of how best to use social media not least for my own private use, but for the good of my charity - I have to say that Twitter has opened up more doors on facebook....

For one it gives you the opportunity to understand which users are not only going to be of interest to you, but always you to them and gives you more of a scope to see on a daily basis what people are doing and progressing more so in business than what personal users had for breakfast, tea, lunch and so on....

But from a purely amateur POV I can say that Rays of Sunshine has spread their message much widely thanks to twitter than many other social networks could...

[MLDina]

Twitter is another one of those social media phenomenons- it's a great service to get from it what you put it. You can't expect to sign up for an account and automatically get results. Eventually it's popularity is going to level out, but I'll keep using it as long as it serves it's purpose.

[Subhankar Ray]

I think Twitter could be an easy way to get branded as a rude person if you cannot reply to thousands of your followers' messages. Twitter can scale, but it is hard to scale genuine human relationships. I see this is a challenge with Twitter, Facebook and the social networking sites.

Regards,

Subhankar Ray

[Fred H Schlegel]

I'm not sure Jump The Shark is the right term, but the service will definitely be changing as use skyrockets. Seems to me that the primary attractions up front for twitter was the kind of 'personal insight' tweet and the 'instant group' feature that worked so well at SWXW last year but may not be working so well this year due to volume.

Since the platform is wide open, we should start seeing dashboard improvements that give more organizational control. The service will also break down into celebrity follows (those with so many followers that any rational discourse is impossible) and personal groups follows (by interest or other where the conversation can continue).

So while the hi-tech gurus may move on, the volume is sure to continue exploding (at least until we are all told how they plan to monetize the thing.)

[karlub]

I don't get it. You think it's silly that Congressman Joe Sestak or some corporate brand doesn't follow anyone, and hence they provide no reciprocity? Then don't follow them.

The fellow above who suggests someone who complains about this is just using it wrong is spot on. In fact, the hardest thing to do for a new person who is using Twitter is get the hang of finding people they *want* to follow.

This is, indeed, a classic example of an insider losing touch with what the regular user experience is like. For example, I don't come here often. I was directed here by @katieharbath on Twitter!.

[Ian Armstrong]

Saying Twitter has peaked is like saying "The Internet (or) social networking is a fad". It's here, it's not going anywhere, and unless someone else does it better twitter.com will remain relevant.

The next big thing you speak of is twitter aggregation. If we can use machine intelligence to do actually concept matching and implement a bit of geolocation, all of a sudden you will be able to engineer the tweet stream into a vivid multi-dimensional picture of any event in the world.

At its base, twitter will continue to matter - it's what we do with the data that will change.

[Ian Armstrong]

%@#*! Spell check... "to do actual concept matching" - sorry

Think: autonomy.com applied to a tweet stream.

[David Petersen]

This is an interesting post, but I don't think you have provided any real evidence that what you think will happen is going to happen. It seems more like you decided this is what you wanted to write and then came up with a few reasons why it might be so.

My experience is that while Twitter may peak, those days are a year or two away. Most people still haven't used Twitter, nor do they entirely understand what it is all about.

Another indication that it might stay popular for some time is the usage amongst the hard core geeks. At SXSW, Twitter was more popular this year than the prior years, despite these folks having used Twitter for over 2 years.

[Nicola Thomas]

As an early adopter of twitter, it's nearly impossible for you to forecast its future because you were too 'close' at the outset (unless of course you've done a representative sample of the gen pop which I doubt). We've only got that graph to go by.

As a twitter newbie, I'm hooked. A quick search of my friends indicate that many of them are newbies too. And us, and many other newbies, are just as hooked as you were at the beginning, and so it goes on and on, mushrooming.

Only two things troubles me: The absense of a revenue model, and two, the celebs that don't follow. They have the funds to have 'anonymous' twitters on their behalf. Just look at the popular drinks co. @innocentdrinks - a model brand indeed. Following nearly as many that follow them.

Twitter isn't peaking yet!

[Fred]

Which other "forms of social interaction on the web" please?

[Alexandre Souza]

It's a very interesting point of view, I am a twitter newbie too an have the same impresion Nicola. But twitter is another way to found people and chat with your freind with a old problem. It is dificult make new freindship.

[O.C.D.]

I think you can say twitter is peaking when "regular" people have 100+ followed/followers. I'd bet a majority of current twitter accounts are "dead" and never make it to 100 updates. Who cares if celeb accounts have 100K? We're still talking about an (hyper) active minority of people using the service. Most "normal" people still don't even know how to find people.

[Kira]

Digg peaked at #80 on Alexa a couple years ago, and has since fallen to #245. Is that supposed to be a positive example of 'evolved' and 'improved'?

[FlashTweet]

A ton of interesting points! But I do not think Twitter will peak anytime soon... It is the next big thing. There are still a ton of people out there that don't know anything about twitter.

[cory huff]

Does Alexa ranking matter? No one actually really pays attention to that, do they?

Nah, Twitter will continue to grow and while it may not be the next hip thing, it will mature and figure out a monetization strategy. It's useful, and that matters a lot more than an Alexa ranking.

[Jon]

My thoughts here, in a thread where I've been tracking gender biases on Twitter, including

Steve’s recommendations for how Twitter should adapt start with “keeping its core users intact”, i.e., prioritizing guys like him, Robert, and Dave who get personal attention in the back of cabs from Twitter founders like Evan and prefer an environment where they’re surrounded by geeks and adulation.

And what a surprise: everybody Steve mentions or links to in this post (Evan, Dave, Evan, Robert, Jeff, Daniel, Erick, Narendra, Seth, and himself) is a guy. In the comments, Nicola, Allison, Zoe, Erica, and Tiffany have interesting things to say. Steve doesn’t respond to them. Neither do any of the other guys.

jon

[Kemeny_x]

I believe the combination of all of the social services can make up for Twitters lack of real relationships. I´ve noticed twits get around faster. facebook and friendfeed are to time consuming, specially facebook with all the noise from random users, friends and family. sure you can believe your best pals with burger king but i doubt that you'll get more responses from them through a facebook page. Maybe so if its a personal account. But even then, its most likely they'll be responding through established PR messages.

Another thought, the twitter community (or rather users) have a better understanding and filtering process to eliminate noise. On the other hand, facebook users, tend to just ignore noise, pretend its signal, and then just continue reading looking for what their next door buddy is doing.

[Tom Cummings]

I tweeted a while ago that I see some similarities between Twitter and Friendster. First major player in a new medium. Really cool idea that lacked a lot of features that many users demanded. Refused to make changes, so people migrated elsewhere....for Friendster it was myspace/facebook; for Twitter it's 3rd party apps like twhirl/tweetdeck. Then, almost overnight, Friendster was an afterthought.

In other words, I think there's a chance that the next big thing won't be a new medium --- it will just be a new microblog that's easier to use, better organized, and full of features that people already get from 3rd party apps instead of from Twitter. And if that's the case, will Twitter regret turning down Facebook's buyout offer, just like Friendster regrets turning down pre-ipo Google stock that would eventually be worth $1B+ ;)

[Matt]

TWITTER WOULD BE IN THE TOP 10 IF PEOPLE LOGGED ON TO TWITTER..

WITH 1000'S OF APPS OUT THERE --- PEOPLE ARE TOO BUSY ON TWITTERDECK, SPLITWEET, TWIRL AND LOTS MORE..TO HAVE TO EVEN GO TO TWITTER.COM!

I WANT TO PEAK ALONG WITH TWITTER AND GROW MY OWN TWITTER WHICH IM DOING WITH AN INTERNET TEAM!

http://teamwork-makes-the-dream-work.ning.com

TEAMWORK NETWORK OF INTERNET MARKETERS — 71 HAVE JOINED IN JUST ITS FIRST WEEK!

EMAIL ME TO KNOW MORE — TWITTER IS AWESOME AND WE FOLLOW EACH OTHERS’ TWITTERS..ALL MULTIPLE ACCOUNTS AMONG OTHER SITES INCLUDING YOUTUBE AND MORE!

You can email me here too for more info: nyactorm11@gmail.com

TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK!!!

[howard lindzon]

i agree on tweetdeck and why not stocktwits too :)

good thinking though about being a tad contrarian. hope you are well.

[newrulez]

The classic music analogy: (producer requests on 10 year timeline:)

Who is Eric Clapton?Get me Eric Clapton.Get me someone who sounds like Eric Clapton.Get me someone who doesn't sound like Eric Clapton.Who is Eric Clapton.

What is (Twitter|FriendFeed|Plurk|Jaiku)?

[Jenny]

Twitter is definitely the topic of fascination right now in workplaces looking to either enter the social media space or expand on the space they're already occupying. It's just crucial to figure out exactly what purpose the time on Twitter can/should serve for your company.

[Thomas B]

1) So you´re also one of those cutting edge geeks who quit when a service gets too mainstream. Still that´s when the money can roll in.

2) Twitter *is* threaded. Only the web interface doesn´t convey it in a good way. That Tweetdeck actually uses the Twitter API properly doesn´t mean Twitter has to acquire it. Tweetdeck "adding more social tentacles" has more to to do with the user base and other features of those other services.

3) So people are ditching RSS for Twitter, but you can´t run a Twitter account like a blog ? From where do you think I entered this blog ?