Should You Abandon Twitter?
My friend, Jesse Stay, has finally given up on Twitter. He states all his reasons why he is leaving and why he thinks you should join him:
I stopped really using Twitter several months ago and I basically agree with Jesse’s reasons for leaving, but I refuse to jump ship for just another social network like FriendFeed, Tumbler or indenti.ca. The reason why Twitter is more appealing than these other options is because I can use my cell phone to do an update. A simple SMS can keep me in touch and I can receive SMS updates of my favorite friends. THAT’S why Twitter is the killer app that people aren’t abandoning.
Honestly, I’ve been disappointed with Twitter. Instead of offering me a pay service that will turn my IM back on (along with other features), they have been putting out fires because of scaling issues. I still read my friend’s tweets to keep up-to-date on their lives, but if I have 140 characters to say, I’ve gone back to using Flickr’s post to blog feature. Then I can include a picture and say as little or as much as I want about my life.
With the advances in mobile options, Twitter’s killer app won’t be as important to me as it has been over the last two years. Until then, I’ll still read my friends’ Twitter feeds to keep up to date. Sadly, I fear that Twitter is just an intermediary technology. As soon as the cell phones increase their capabilities (or when there is an iPhone in every pocket), Twitter will no longer serve any use.
Thanks for the mention, Laura. I agree – SMS is a huge part of Twitter’s success. I have been using workarounds to get around that problem though. For instance, FriendFeed has an excellent iPhone interface – it’s not push notifications like SMS would give you, but it’s not bad. Come September, when the iPhone enables push notifications, SMS will no longer be a need so long as clients are built for this stuff. Expect a few FriendFeed and idenit.ca clients that do stuff like that.
Identi.ca has e-mail-based SMS currently, but it’s not very good. I expect them to adapt true SMS in the near future.
Comment by Jesse Stay — July 29, 2008 @ 10:26 am
Great post Laura,
There is one statement in your post that makes the most sense, and as you said, the biggest reason people don’t leave in drives, SMS.
You can build as many iPhone applications as you want, but the majority of the cell phone market isn’t controlled by the iPhone.
What I’m hearing Jesse say is, if you have an iPhone, things will be sweet for you, if not, oh well. Pretty presumptuous of these sites if you ask me.
The least common denominator amongst most phones is SMS. While it doesn’t allow for long conversations, it pretty much works.
Comment by Thom Allen — July 29, 2008 @ 12:04 pm