A Perspective on Location Services, Mobile Entrepreneurship & Startup Life

Why do I blog this?

As an active Twitter user I can understand why Twitter is fun and engaging but it has some serious flaws IMHO that can make the hype stop pretty fast.

a) Broadcasting personal messages creates an information overload for receivers. Once following over a hundred users you have to switch to the Twitter search if you are interested in a specific topics, you recognise that social networks provide better utility for the time spend on the site.

b) Switching costs to sites like Facebook are marginal and now that Facebook has a similar and more feature-rich lifestream layout it’s better to post on their site and most people have their real friends just one message away. The @syntax is not working to reach my friends on Facebook, so I should use either or.

c) The broadcasting scheme is perfect for celebraties or companies to inform their fan community and ask questions. It’s like a new media channel which is so extremely limited with its 140 characters that it is really hard to monetize. If they change something in a fundamental way people can be pissed off and turn aways, there is no persistent data that keeps you there. A message is a one time shout out and the collected friend list is just for your ego, business value not as high as on other sites. There is hype and there will be reality after some time.