Is Twitter Doomed to Fail ?

[vijayninel]

Tweet

That's happening more and more often these days !
Has twitter finally run out of server space ?

Is Twitter Doomed to Fail ?

I think a lot of you must remember the good old Y2K and dot.com boom days. The new economy was supposed to change everything and investors sunk huge amounts of money into the .com sites. Then one fine day people and investors found out that you cant make money out of a service which may be hugely popular but makes no real money.

I was wondering if we are seeing something similar with twitter today. No doubt that tweeting which is a new way of "microblogging" is immensely popular today, but they really dont make any money and I'm not so sure that they ever will be able to do so.

As it usually turns out on the net, Im not alone in these thoughts and I came across this interesting blog post : 20 reasons why Twitter will fail which added to a few more of my doubts. Spam is also a rising problem on twitter with all kinds of bots following me and posting spam wherever they can.

Some twitter spambots following me !

So what do you think ? Will twitter be there in 5 years time ? Let us know.

[initpidzero]

it is serving it purpose, like everything else in past it will also get replaced by something better, but i dont think it has failed or something.

[vijayninel]

Originally Posted by initpidzero it is serving it purpose, like everything else in past it will also get replaced by something better, but i dont think it has failed or something.

What will it be replaced by ? A 280 character limit microblogging site ? I really dont think so. Google has launched buzz to compete with twitter but has not been as successful as twitter so far.

A very large number of people actually use twitter for a short time and when the charm wears off just forget about it. I wonder if the novelty feature will completely wear off in a couple of years.

[blufox]

Twitter need to grow.
But it will not fail... it will evolve, like any piece of good software.

[initpidzero]

vijay, it doesn't have to be replaced by same kind of thing. I mean blogger and twitter are completely different thing, but it is said twitter is replacement for blogger and few people prefer it over facebook as well.
Forums replaced newsgroups, but technologically they are totally different. As for wearing the charm thing , the twitter population consist more of oldies as compared to new fellas, so they do stay for long with monotonous stuff.
Here is an interesting video, one of my friend shared with me, I think you will find it interesting:
Is Twitter here to stay?

[vijayninel]

Originally Posted by initpidzero vijay, it doesn't have to be replaced by same kind of thing. I mean blogger and twitter are completely different thing, but it is said twitter is replacement for blogger and few people prefer it over facebook as well. Forums replaced newsgroups, but technologically they are totally different. As for wearing the charm thing , the twitter population consist more of oldies as compared to new fellas, so they do stay for long with monotonous stuff.

Ok... lets say twitter does stay and "Evolve" the question is how will they fund its growth and sustainability ? You mentioned forums and blogs, but these make money by advertising and other means like sponsorship. So can twitter be a successful advertising platform ? And will tweeters like to have ads in their tweets and profile pages ?

I dont think twitter will ever be able to market ads as successfully as Google adsense, which has a brilliant ad machine and algorithms to target ads.

[stonedsurd]

Twitter's not going anywhere.

Twitter Opening Its Own Custom Data Center In Utah Later This Year

It's become almost like Facebook now.

[vijayninel]

Yes if you are offering a product for free then there will probably be takers for it. Im pretty sure that if I started offering burgers for free to everyone then I will find quite a few takers. But does popularity equate to a sustainable business model ? All those servers, infrastructure and employees cost money. Right now twitter is being funded by people who have made their money elsewhere. How long can they keep on funding it or will be willing to fund it ?

Twitter seems to be placing its bets on "promoted tweets"

In the first phase of the plan, Promoted Tweets will appear at the top of Twitter search results. They'll be just like regular tweets, meaning that users can reply, retweet them, or favorite them. But they will be clearly labeled as advertising.

I'm not sure if these "promoted tweets" will be able to make that much money. or will they be ?

[stonedsurd]

I would think that a large chunk of their money comes from selling data that the users provide. Twitter is a treasure trove of trends and demographic stats.

[Stuge]

its growing and whale is a sign of that .now mr sachin too has joined it

@vijay : you think twitter will fail .why have you posted follow me remove that at once

[Superfrag]

I don't think so. Its coming along nicely, very well, almost all celebs and sport stars are there and tweeting away.

I'm pretty sure it'll find a way to fund itself, or maybe buyers who can make use of the data.

[vijayninel]

Originally Posted by stonedsurd I would think that a large chunk of their money comes from selling data that the users provide. Twitter is a treasure trove of trends and demographic stats.

Twitter selling users data ? what data ? people keep posting meaningless tweets in twitter, thats all ? who will keep track of whats written in those tweets and make sense of it ? Do you think you can really get systematic and useful survey data from tweets ? How ?

Originally Posted by Stuge its growing and whale is a sign of that .now mr sachin too has joined it

OH WOW !!! JUST WOW !!! SACHIN too has JOINED !!! that means that twitter is going to make boatloads of money tomorrow right ?

Um no ... reality check : Sachin isnt going to pay for all those servers and infrastructure. He will infact strain it more. As I said earlier just because a service is very popular and you like it very much doesnt make it a sustainable business model.

Originally Posted by Stuge @vijay : you think twitter will fail .why have you posted follow me remove that at once

LOL .. so if I think it will fail I should stop using twitter ? Why ? If someone is offering me a free service at their own expense then why shouldn't I use it ? I am not paying anything to them for it. If tomorrow they asked me to pay for the service then I will dump it rapidly.

And personally I think twitter is garbage. I dont use it to tweet any personal stuff, much to the dismay of my followers. I only use it to promote my website for free.

Originally Posted by Superfrag I don't think so. Its coming along nicely, very well, almost all celebs and sport stars are there and tweeting away. I'm pretty sure it'll find a way to fund itself, or maybe buyers who can make use of the data.

Wow .. all those celebs are paying for twitter right ? um ..it seems not.

heres another interesting article for thought : Twitter’s Earlybird Discount Codes Fail To Offer Killer Group Buying Deals

[Jasku]

I think it will do just fine, probably better, as Angad already pointed out it is indeed a treasure trove for really useful marketing data for major corporates.

Also, you have mentioned the promoted topic which shows up in the top trending list, that's a pretty neat idea too, iirc toy story 3 was promoted it.

If it really was an unsustainable model, why would google make repeated attempts at buying it out.

Ps- only mods can post articles in the news section?


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[stonedsurd]

Originally Posted by vijayninel Twitter selling users data ? what data ? people keep posting meaningless tweets in twitter, thats all ? who will keep track of whats written in those tweets and make sense of it ? Do you think you can really get systematic and useful survey data from tweets ? How ?

Get over yourself?

[vijayninel]

Originally Posted by Jasku If it really was an unsustainable model, why would google make repeated attempts at buying it out. Ps- only mods can post articles in the news section?

Google has denied they were ever into talks with twitter to buy it . These are just speculative rumors. Goole has launched "Buzz" its own copy of twitter anyway. Also even if Google ever had plans to but it doesnt mean that it would have been making money. Google too is known to have poured in money in projects which never got it anything.

However I think twitter can make money if the advertising is much more aggressive. this will however surely put off a lot of users.