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?
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I use Tweetdeck to group the people that I follow, so I can pay the most attention to the people that I care about the most. (there are, of course, different tools to accomplish the same thing). And I only follow people that I think I would want to read in the future.
I think the system only starts to break down when you feel obligated to keep track of everything that is happening, or to engage with others at all times.
It’s okay to use social media to keep up with your friends and colleagues instead of being a personal brand manager, if that’s what you want to do.
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Adding to this discussion, though, don’t you think that what you (and me) are doing is basically using Twitter as an RSS feed at that point? Like you say “I only follow people that I think I would want to read in the future”. It feels like reading is not what Twitter’s strength is. That’s why we have the @ functionality.
But just imagine following 10,000 people but only listening to 15-20 on your Tweetdeck. What was your intention following the 10,000 on the first place. That’s the main point I’m trying to explore.
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The interaction is still there – more so with people that I know in real life, but still there when I dip in to the weaker network and see something interesting. And it is a lovely thing to do.I just don’t beat myself up for not constantly interacting with everyone.
I can’t imagine why I would follow 10,000 people. At the rate I’ve followed people over the last year or so, it would take me forever to roll up that many. It would be like a full time job to follow and interact with that many people. I’d end up spending most of my time responding to people that talked directly to me, I imagine, because I wouldn’t want them to feel unanswered.
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Great post!
I blogged about the same recently. The obsession with follower count is truly out of control.
Your observation about Twitter diminishing value holds true for all social media networks. The engagement value goes down as the follower counts go up.
If social media is all about two-way interaction and engagement, how can you possibly stay true to the spirit of this medium when you’re following and being followed by thousands. As you so rightly pointed out, it’s becoming a RSS reader rather than a true engagement channel.
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When I first began using the Internet – way back in ’88 – the ‘net was a very clubby atmosphere, filled with strong technicians and, by and large, not the sort of place you’d expect to run into your mother. (A full USENET news feed was a 4MEG download, which was a bit of a chore on a 2400 baud modem; eventually it grew to unmanageable proportions.) In a sense, this is probably where Twitter was 6-12 months ago.
When everyone is using Twitter, it will become difficult or even impossible to use it in the same way in which we now do. In essence, if everyone is listening to everyone else, we’ll all be drinking from a firehose, which is unsustainable and wearying. Of course, better tools will help mitigate this, but machine filtering can only take you so far.
In the future, Twitter may embody what Yogi Berra meant when he said, “Nobody goes there anymore – it’s too crowded.”
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