Pretty dramatic prognosis eh..Esp, after all the hype that twitter is getting in the media, one would think that the whole world uses twitter. Here’s why I don’t think twitter will not be such a darling 2/3 years from now. It might still exist in some shape/form (I think it is going to be acquired and integrated into a larger offering), but it won’t be the buzz word anymore.
First the good part.. Let’s take a look at some data from Compete and Alexa (companies that provide web statistics about sites) in comparison to facebook and myspace (the 800 lbs Gorillas of social networking)
Traffic Ranking :
Similar data from Alexa (where the long term data is available for free, unlike Compete)
No surprises here. We see that the ranking of Twitter has gone up drastically and is staying there..
Reach :
Interesting trend. One would expect that the reach (i.e. the number of people accessing the site) would go up as drastically as the ranking, but it is not as linear. Facebook is doing pretty well in this statistic.
Page Views :
I think this is to be expected. Twitter does not rely as much on page view due to the design and nature of the site.
Looking at all the data above, it looks like twitter is in a good place right. Now let’s add another dimension to the analysis. Let’s take a look at how Google views twitter. “Google Insights” is a service offered by Google to help analyze the “search” volume of keywords across regions and timelines. Since Google has ~70% of the search engine traffic, this is a good way to observe the trends.
Here is a graph showing the “interest” starting from 2004…
Zooming into the last 12 months..
Interesting to see that while facebook is getting more and more “interesting”, twitter is not catching up. This might be due to two reasons.
- Twitter really did not promote it’s search function until July 2009, meaning the search engines did not have a way to scrape the site and as such did not have a lot of content to show to users.
- Twitter partnered with Google and Bing in Oct 2010 2009 to index it’s posting. Again, this means that the search engines just got to the data and it might take some time for them to start showing the data in the search results.
I don’t know if this is conclusive evidence to show that Twitter will not make it. Twitter definitely has its place, but I don’t think it is all that the media has hyped it to be. Even though the media hype has driven more and more users to Twitter, the company has to yet come out with an viable business plan. I think that businesses are flocking towards twitter, because users are.. but once the fad passes on, the world is also going to move on.
P.S : I don’t think I need to mention to anyone looking at the data presented above that MySpace is on a downward spiral :). Who still uses Coldfusion to run a site?? That is so 90s!! :).
Good one Vinay. Probably you are trying to predict the future of twitter. I may agree with your predictions on a gut feel, but not based on the data points that you have given above. First 5 graphs seems to provide viable and specific data to compare these sites on some scale. Google insights is a not a credible data point at this time. Look at this
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=AAAAA%2CBBBBB%2Czzzzzz&date=today%2012-m&cmpt=q
What does this comparison of goggle insights say, nothing. its a presentation of their search meta data. Google’s inability to present twitter content is a good point. If twitter grows, Google may be going behind twitter to enable Google to search through the pages. Just the fact google is already grown and twitter is growing. Google has not yet become “King Maker” of business. More data points would help me agree if your predictions are going to be true.
Ez – I am not predicting the future of Twitter, as much as I am saying that it is not going to be seen or retain it’s standing as “the’ way for people to communicate/interact. Also, unless it becomes part of a bigger business or strategy, I don’t see it being financially viable.
On Google Insights, I am not saying that it is be all, end all for forecasting what is going to happen. But when you have a tool, trough which ~70% of the web search traffic flows, you can get a pretty good idea of what the world is thinking :). I am only using it as one of the means (in addition to the gut feel as you said) to predict what I think is going to happen to twitter.
Any Web 2.0 thingies cannot stand for long time (>4-5 years). Earlier (in 2003/4), we had Hi5, a social networking site. It ruled for quite sometime. Then came Orkut and the rest is history. It dominated the socio web from 2004 to 2007/8. Orkut was eaten by FaceBook easily. Now, FB is the clear ruler. But, this will not sustain. Probably in another 3-4 years, there will be another master piece Web X.0 application that will eat FB too. This is a trend that I notice from 2003. This chain goes on and on. The reason is very simple: Humans innovate things; innovation will get refined and refined day by day. When that happens, one application will easily die and the other will raise its head.
Same is the case with Twitter. It is the current micro-blogging ruler. But, as you said, it will not be the future. Definitely not. I read a report couple of months back – almost half of the twitter users are i-also-have-an-account-in-twitter types. If I remember it correct, I think only 10% of total users access their accounts daily. One other reason for Twitter’s predictive fall in future is: It’s purely text based. How long people will be interested to read only 140 characters. The twitter pattern of micro-blogging will be bored to users in near future. For sure, a twitter-killer is going to emerge. The question is: When. I get at least 2-3 “blah-blah user is following you on twitter” message DAILY. All these are strangers. I will have to periodically clean my account to “remove” those unknown users. Many and many users I noticed have “Following in 1000s”. Practically it is of no use. I can’t manage my account with only “Following 100”. In 2-3 years from now, Twitter is going to become like a heavily polluted pond, which cannot be cleaned.
Twitter phenomenon goes beyond web, Don’t think Alexa or others can track that as of yet.
Alexa and other analytic count only web part thats just 1/2 the story in case of Twitter.
I started twitting few months ago. I use mobile Twitter client on my Rokr E6!
to tweet and read tweets.
Twitter’s simplicity, accessibility is its USP. that Alexa or others can’t measure! : -)
Chetan – You are right in saying that Alexa does not capture all the traffic a site gets. They take the information they have at hand (via the Alexa toolbar and other sources) and then estimate the traffic/ranking of a site. I am not saying it is not popular now.. just that I don’t see it as a long term player. Thx for your comments.
клаÑÑ)мне понра)оÑобенно!
КÑтати как отметили Хеллоуин? 🙂