Has Twitter peaked?
I was just sending a tweet about some excellent chicken livers I'd eaten when I espied some information that made my acid perform a refluctive motion.
According to eMarketer, three different digital actuaries declared that Twitter traffic has performed a slight plummet.
While comScore suggested a drop of 8.1 percent in October and Compete estimated 2.1 percent, while Nielsen, that apogee of accuracy, declared a 27.8 percent decline between September and October.
It seems that these figures, blessedly inconsistent as they are, are not taking account of all the third-party and mobile methods of keeping everyone up with your eating, drinking, reading, philosophizing and socializing.
But is it also possible that some people will simply never participate in the Twitter phenomenon, finding it either annoying, uncool, or even too much effort?
With Twitter intent on becoming more businesslike (why does the word 'more' seem slightly redundant here?), 2010 seems destined to be the year that the microblogging service becomes either de rigueur or dazed and confused.
Will Twitter become a permanent habit or a disappearing, perhaps even elitist, fad? I'll tweet Nostradamus and ask him.
You didn't know Nostradamus is on Twitter? Where have you been?
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
Performed a slight plummet? Last i checked, verbs aren't performed. Don't let your seemingly intrinsic need to use superfluous verbiage detract from the article. And yes, those words are part of my vocabulary, and yes, I actually used them all correctly.
Twitter use is driven by handheld devices. Look at the tweets: the vast majority are not posted from the web: they are posted by a third-party application/service.
I almost never access Twitter via a web browser, whether it be on my computer or my iPod touch. 95% of my Twitter usage has been done on various iPhone/iPod touch apps: Twitterrific, Echofon, several others, and currently Tweetdeck.
As a matter of fact, Twitter.com on a web browser is arguably the worst way to access Twitter.
I see more PR firms use Twitter than any other tools. Twitter will be the one that replaces traditional PR processes.
Or, how about stupid?
I am quoting and agreeing with this post. The whole concept of someone constantly letting the world know your mundane tasks seems rather wasteful to me. Ok, maybe for following a conference that you can't be at, Twitter is good, but everyday stuff. Nah,
Yes, too much effort and not enough value.
Most people need to filter and reduce the amount of junk they receive from various channels. Twitter seems to only add to the noise.
Consider Twitter an information network rather than social network and it all makes sense. It's a replacement for IM, it's a replacement for RSS and other news feeds, it's even an occasional replacement for email. If you're not reading interesting stuff there then you're following the wrong people. Even e-mail is useless if all you get is spam.
But I will concede that Twitter could be easier to use and more obvious to extract value from. Too many of the apps available focus on cool rather than genuinely useful.
We introduced a Twitter Sales Leads tool at the end of last week though and the feedback has been amazing. We take people who are tweeting a need for a specific product or service and make that available, minus all the rest of the noise, to companies that provide what's being requested as a sales lead.
Tell me that isn't powerful!
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
iam just f***ing annoyed about hearing it in the news all the time when it has done nothing
Literally.
It's okay, but I don't really get a buzz out of it like I had hoped.
Maybe I'm just an old fart though.
lately it seems that more folks are getting fired using Facebook, and I just heard from another friend of my by using twitter got a new job, so I say, Twitter is the best for what it is and does.. If anything more people should be dumping facebook, but that's just my opinion. :) hehehe.
Facebook has turned a profit, I believe.
If you are talking about the number of users, no way. Twitter is no where near its maximum number of potential users.
Those are two separate topics.
You should be more specific.
twitter is great for getting info out there in real time. Important info not what you had for lunch. I agree with the comment about 'the downfall of society' though to an extent. But you can throw facebook and half the internet into the same basket. Apparently our attention spans are shortening. we get bored quicker these days. People can't sit still and read a book, watch a movie or have a meal without checking something online. I'm 40 i can handle it. But young kids growing up are going to be scatter brains when they get older.
I think Shakespeare even wrote a play about twitter - "Much Ado About Nothing".
The twitter PR machine has run out of gas. They valiantly tried to scare some poorly managed web company into buying them, but since Meg Whitman left ebay, there's nobody gullible enough to buy them. I don't know, maybe after Time Warner spins out AOL, they might merge with twitter.
watching grass grow might works were you are but the grass has stopped growing hear in washington (too cold) and the paint is bad for my health, so no not much is here. I guess they could sell twitter to Palin she could tell us all obout how she can see russia from her house :)
- by fondy November 25, 2009 9:04 PM PST
- I've found Twitter to be a convenient way to keep up with favorite bands and comments from people in the public eye, but as a communication tool between myself and friends, it seems a little redundant. Maybe if I didn't already have a Facebook account and an SMS package for my phone I would feel differently. I suspect that if Twitter wasn't such a useful tool for bloggers and reporters that it probably wouldn't be getting as much media coverage as it currently receives.
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