10 Reasons Why Twitter Might Die
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Though Twitter may be one of the most innovative channels to reach the mass, there are serious doubts about its growth. The application which is currently flooded with marketers and bots alike has been under speculation from the very moment it started hitting the news headlines. Below are the ten reasons why I think Twitter might die:
1.
Fake IDs
One thing that got most people hooked to Twitter was the presence of their favourite celebrity. But there have been numerous instances where imposters were faking to be real celebrities. Celebrities like Lindsay Lohan, Darth Vader, Bill Clinton etc., have had their fake ids on Twitter. Although Twitter has introduced the concept of “Verified Account” which let’s the real celeb verify whether he or she is the real one on Twitter. This privilege is just limited to celebrities and not all can have a control over their fake presence online. The identity theft would lead to serious crisis over time and could lead to Twitter’s death.
2.
140 is too short
Twitter banks on the ability to disseminate information with only “140” words for one simple question: What’s happening? Due to this very limitation, URL shortening services like bit.ly, nxy.in, tr.im, tinyurl etc., have mushroomed over the past months. They are great services but a user never really knows what’s hiding behind the shortened URLs. Such shortened URLs may lead to phishing sites or sites with Trojans and Worms or spamming sites.
3.
Breeding ground for Trojans and Worms
Once individuals start using Twitter as a tool to pollute the internet with links to malware, Trojans, video sites, phishing sites and spamming sites, Twitter quickly becomes an object of aversion for the users. People will stop using Twitter with the fear of getting their profiles or credentials hacked. Twitter has already had such attacks in the past and there is no guarantee that it will not occur in the future as well. Hence Trojans and Worms can simply put an end to Twitter.
4.
It is just a Fad
Let’s face it. Most of us started using Twitter because most others were talking about it day in and day out. The rate at which Twitter’s user base is growing shows that more and more teen are now using the app. Does this mean that the elders are now moving out of Twitter in search of a new service? Well a similar phenomenon was observed in social bookmarking site “Digg”. The research shows that as older mass moved out, the younger ones came in and started Digging.
Moreover, the rate at which a technology is growing, Twitter could just be replaced by a new and better service. I bet a new start-up is already looking at this possibility and trying to tap the “moving outs” of Twitter.
5.
Fake RTs
It’s not just Fake IDs on Twitter can be a pain; it’s Fake RTs that can actually give you a “bad” reputation on the internet. RTs, or re-tweets, are messages that are completely copied from another user and posted as it is in his or her profile. What this means is that a user ‘A’ can simply add “RT” to another user ‘B’, and follow it with a text that is not actually tweeted by the user B. For e.g., a user can re-tweet @johndoe by simply RT @ johndoe http://ww.spamsite.spam where in fact the site “http://ww.spamsite.spam” was never mentioned by the user johndoe. This is just another way of spamming and can be a complete turn off.
6.
It’s another form of Pager
Twitter is all about monologues and there are huge chances that your comment never really gets to the twitterer. Even when it gets, you might never get a reply to it. Hence, Twitter is just like the obsolete and extinct Pager that was with us few years back but couldn’t stay with us as it had no technology to engage in two way communication. But if you were sharing comments with someone over the blog, the chances of getting replies and hence engaging in a conversation are much higher.
7.
Messages are here today and gone tomorrow
On Twitter, there are many users who post thousands of texts in a given day. Hence, if someone posted a text from US during his day time and if someone from Asia wanted to read what the post was from his US counterpart, the chances are that he will never see the post as it gets lost in the clutter of hundreds of texts flooded in his page. So what’s the use of tweeting when you don’t get the message when you need it the most? However with other services like emails, IMs or even blog sites, we can easily get the right message at the right time.
8.
Followers
One of the biggest reasons for Twitter’s popularity was the fact that anyone could follow anybody’s tweets. This gave rise to people getting into the competition for getting higher number of followers.
When you have too many followers, it becomes too hard to follow everyone’s tweets. Instead you start ignoring the tweets from your followers and focus on disseminating your own tweets. This can completely put off your followers since I would listen to you only if you listen to me.
9.
Infrastructure
With such a fast expanding user base, Twitter might just run into a problem of handling the mass influx of users. The site has been facing major issues with the increasing number of users and thus there has been growing instances of the site going down. The recent D-DOS attack kept Twitter down for almost two days. If Twitter is not able to back its growth with a good technical and physical infrastructure, we just might see the end of it.
10.
Retention Issue
According to a research, Twitter is having a tough time keeping its retention rate high. The Nielsen report published here shows that Twitter currently has a retention rate of around 40% which means that out of 100 users visiting in January, only 40 are visiting in the following month i.e., February. Although this research dates back to April 2009, the statistics presented give enough reasons for Twitter to pull itself and think of ways to gets its users more addicted to the site.
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Comments (3)
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tukas07 Mar 10 at 09 45 amI think, that twitter will die as myspace did. Myspace had a lot if celebrities support at first also, but the trend had finished, and thats it. twitter will become boring some day, and everybody will start to use some other new age super application on the web...
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Al Gates07 Mar 10 at 03 29 pmUnless Twitter re-invents itself and creates other useful things that Twitters can get into and enjoy and use....yes, it will DIE.
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