Twitter's Down Again, I Wish It Would Stay Down For Good

I've only been on Twitter a few months now, but I think it is by far the most over-hyped, over-rated Internet application I've seen in the past fifteen years. What a waste. While many Twitter users talk about how it allows for such "meaningful conversations", that's a complete crock. The service is down every few days, half my new sign ups each day are links to porn sites and no business gets accomplished with the service. Not to mention, why do people that we associate with only in the business world think we want to know all about their personal lives?

If this was any other company providing a real business communication platform like your cell phone, email, or Internet connection, they would have already gone out of business with all the outages they've had. Twitter is NOT a real communication platform. The company survives now purely on hype, with no real business model and can't even provide a service that is reliable. Some my say I'm not getting out of Twitter what I should since I'm currently not following anyone. They would be right, if they mean getting spam, comments about people's love life or all that other garbage you get each day from following people.

When I first got on Twitter I was following people and it was a complete waste of time. But what I think is really sad is that too many people in the business world already rely on email far too much for communication and it seems no one knows how to use a phone anymore. With Twitter, many now think they can use the service as an even shorter version of email. If anyone thinks that having meaningful conversations based on 140 character blurbs is the way to get business done, I think they are fooling themselves. I also tend to notice that many of the power users on Twitter tend to be the same people who in person, can't speak well, can't carry on a real conversation and can't speak intelligibly.

I judge the value of any communication service by the value it provides. If Twitter went away tomorrow, would it have any serious impact on being able to get business done? Nope. While it does have some value for marketing purposes, especially for brands that want to be able to reach out to consumers, it's not a game changer, but rather the biggest fad we've ever had in the Internet space. So why am I on Twitter? I wish I wasn't. But some readers prefer to use Twitter the same way some folks use Google Reader for RSS feeds. So if people want news that way, I'll deliver it, but I don't think Twitter provides any value.

Comments

[Joe Amici]

Twitter's main value add is the real-time search. Because it has enough inertia to have some discussion on anything going on now, it's now a decent service to find out what's going on now - And for that you dont even need an account

[AdamV]

I've been on the twitter hate wagon from day one.

I have really really tired to like it, but I just don't see the point other than if your not on the twitter bandwagon then your not apart of the "cool crowd". I am also sick of my favorite blogs constantly giving props to twitter, I get it, you like shooting out 140 characters of "who cares" information. example: *click here: tinyurl* which links to some random story or lolcat.

The next big fail social media are going to be the 5-12 second videos of Who Cares. The only thing that is happening is our short MTV attention span is shrinking at a rapid pace. Soon we will just grunt to conduct business.

I think once Oprah and news media gets their fill the attention will drift away. In the meanwhile I will neglect my account promising tomorrow that I will tweet.

[preetam mukherjee]

Hahahah! It was no more than 7 hours ago that I was brooding on the same subject when I saw our newest set of Twitter followers.
I even jotted it down(http://life.marcellus.tv/) !

Twitter, to me, is a real reflection of our attention-deficient world. It's right there..out in our faces. Have a whole lot of things to say but not enough to say about each "thing"? No problem- tweet it.

[bitonio]

Who cares? Use it if you see benefit: readers happy, corporate/brand interactivity with their employees/consumers.

Twitter is a crap but everybody use it... and where is people, you'll find money :-)

[Seriously]

Nobody serious has time or would post inane comments all day nor would they want to receive them. Great toy for high schoolers. Not a great toy for adults.

[Dan Rayburn]

@bitonio: "and where is people, you'll find money"- I hope you don't truly believe that. There are hundreds of examples of companies over the past ten years who have had a lot of traffic, lots of eyeballs, lots of users etc... and they all went under. Traffic does NOT guarantee revenue.

[GreenField]

BRAVO DAN!!!! Frikin' well said!
I correlate Twitter to a new 'hot' bar that just opened in Vegas. Lots of money behind it, lots of marketing, lots of word of mouth to generate short term interest. All-the-while no one realizes what is going on and there are no 'reasons' [based on facts] why the bar is so interesting until the real truth comes out. What is the truth? The new bar [twitter] is just another bar in a long line that approaches the market with some new gimmick to rope you in. Then 3-6 weeks later the bar owners cash out and close the place. Its all hyped and then dies a quick and painful death. Who makes out? The bar owners make bank for 3 weeks, then walk away.

So, when is Twitter going to sell and their owners walk away with grips of cash?

[StreamTweet]

Dan,

I take issue with your last statement: "If Twitter went away tomorrow, would it have any serious impact on being able to get business done?"

The fact is many companies have developed real strategies for leveraging social media tools like Twitter. These efforts allow them to manage customer service, inform on promotions, and manage PR in a way not possible before. Few examples for reference: Zappos, JetBlue, BestBuy, and Whole Foods.

Relating to streaming content, many directly link the increase of Video consumption on the web through the promotion of content through services like Facebook and Twitter. In fact the majority of YouTudes traffic happens off site and directly through these social services.

My last point relates to search, and Twitters impact on real time events. Services like twitter are showing to have a real impact on Google’s business more than Bing and Yahoo combined.

Does Twitter need to increase their reliability- Absolutely. But saying its absence would have no impact on business is just false.

[Dan Rayburn]

@StreamTweet: I did say "While it does have some value for marketing purposes, especially for brands that want to be able to reach out to consumers..." so I agree with you on that. However, many of these same companies found ways to reach consumers very well, only two years ago when Twitter was not around. So the idea that they would not survive and grow without Twitter around is not something I would agree with.

[StreamTweet]

Dan,

That argument is so broad it could apply to almost anything. Many companies found a way of reaching consumers without Paid Search, Email, and Websites also, but these services like Twitter allow companies to reach consumers at extremely low costs per engagement- which has a direct reflection to the bottom line.

I think you just don’t like Twitter- which is fine.

[Roadman]

Twitter is like a browser,
Do I need a browser within a browser occupied by others browsing? in my case no but I have one, just to cater for those who are still griped by twitter mania.

To twitters credit the power of the application to highlight a trend is remarkable.

[bitonio]

@Dan: If a company has audience and only audience, it's an empty shell, totally agree. We had and still have a lot of empty shell 2.0. Fortunatly for the business, this is changing. Now if you are a respectable brand, you need to be on Twitter & Facebook. These are places to be, to exist for some high schoolers and anyone "young".

[Alex Zambelli]

Dan, I completely agree. For every useful function that Twitter might perform, there's another, better service on the Web that has 10x the functionality, feature set and reliability. You want social networking? Facebook is the undisputed king. You want business networking? LinkedIn was invented for it. You want to broadcast your thoughts to the world? Start a blog. You want to send short messages to your friends? Use a cell phone. ;)

I see very little, if any, value in Twitter.

This pretty much sums it up:
http://gizmodo.com/5330049/if-only-100-people-were-in-twitter

[Sunny Gault]

Dan, I don't think Twitter is for everyone, but to say it's a complete waste of time is a gross generalization. Personally, I use Twitter to network with other people. The world is becoming smaller and smaller, and I don't always have time to pick up the phone or email someone. Twitter is nice because it provides a quick glimpse into that person's life. I may or may not choose to work with someone based on their tweets.

[Tim Street]

Yep and that TV thing is just a fad too.

[MikeMora]

Either people get Twitter or they don't. I find it useful for "discussing" stocks with other investors.
Check out the community on Stocktwits where individual investors as well as hedge fund managers (and even VC's) offer investment thoughts and ideas.

Numerous CEO's in many fields are using Twitter to communicate on a more personal level that allows shareholders and employees in on their world.

Twitter Search is the most powerful, real time measure of events on the web, bar none.

To so casually dismiss this powerful new form of communication means you have not invested the time to understand the platform or the phenomenon.

Attach a Twitter link from this page and see how fast your "Followers" exceed your RSS readership.

It is that powerful.

[Rich Miller]

Dan: I've actually found Twitter extremely useful for finding links and commentary on the data center/cloud computing sector. In my experience, I've found lots of informed technologists posting useful material. It's also become a surprisingly meaningful source of traffic for my site. If you're selective about who you follow, I believe there's a lot of value to be found via Twitter.

Having said that, the ongoing reliability problems are an embarrassment.

[John Farrell]

I'm with Dan on this one. I signed up for Twitter because of author's at the Book Expo in May raving about how it was a much better book promotion tool for them than anything else. That may be true, but for the time being (between books) I find most new sign-ups are like Dan's links, to useless sites....

[Video Streaming]

I also find very usefful Twitter.

[TomC]

I really like twitter, though I hardly ever tweet and don't formally "follow" many people. There are several people within our competitors, clients, and potential clients who tweet far more detail than they should. We can get insights into what they are working on and who they are meeting with just by typing twitter.com/. We find that to be very informative and enormously useful.

Sad to add that some of the "loosest lips" appear to have been let go.

[TomC]

That should have read twitter.com/user_name

[KevinH]

Dan, Thanks for taking a realistic stand on Twitter. History will show it for what it really is, but meantime I too am sick of hearing about the "importance of Twitter" yada yada yada.