This might be something that @ev or @jack aren’t expecting. But I think it could potentially transform what users get out of Twitter, and ultimately, the future of Twitter itself.
And in some ways it might be exactly the opposite of what happens with other web businesses.
I’m starting to think that as more people use Twitter, the less valuable it becomes.
This thought has been echoing across the blogosphere in the past week or so.
Brian Shaler says in a post that following ten thousand plus people “destroyed my user experience”.
Brian has trimmed down the number of people he follows, but the problem is that those people are also busy adding more and more people in this “followers race”. So how can they hear what Brian is saying? It goes out of his circle of influence.
Last night @sarahintampa and I exchanged some messages about the lack of activity lately on Twitter. Thinking out loud I told Sarah if it could be that as more users have thousands of followers they interact less and less with their audience? It was an “eureka” moment. When you follow and are followed by thousands, all you can do is passively read. Good luck trying to interact.
Sarah replied “I’m at 3K+ myself…now I can’t possibly read all tweets-just pop in & out and see what’s going on. Been thinking of starting over. So much crap. So much spam. The honeymoon is over.”
On a previous post I mentioned how Twitter can be like a room where you are able to sneak in a room “where the most brilliant scientists, marketers, newsmakers are talking to each other”.
The problem is that they are not talking to each other anymore.
They are shouting through their bullhorns to the crowd.
What do you think? Is this something that can be fixed? Is TwitterDeck and other filtering tools enough to continue getting value out of Twitter?
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