

Could Twitter be "MySpaced"? - buckpost
http://www.markevanstech.com/2011/04/16/could-twitter-get-myspaced/
Could Twitter be supplanted by something new and different? It would be a huge challenge but it's possible.
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chuhnk
It took me 4 years to realize the benefits of twitter beyond self absorbed
social micro blogging. Its a real communication platform which allows you to
interact with people around the world. For example the first thing that
brought me to twitter was real time updates on a ruby conference. Where else
was I going to get that? I can get information before its been posted as news.
The great thing about it is respected figures in almost all communities are
participating. In a few words they can let us in on what they are working on
or take the time to answer questions. If you have a problem you can throw it
out there on some hashtag and hope one in a million will respond and usually
they will. Its completely changed communication and I cant see it dying.

However I believe the micro blogging platform should be treated like email. An
open messaging system that can be adopted by anyone and defines an underlying
protocol so that we can send messages between all micro blogging sites. I have
a gmail account, do I really want to create a hotmail account to email someone
with a hotmail domain? If I have a twitter account and someone has an rstat.us
account then perhaps I want to message them.

I think anyone who did decides to take on the task of turning micro blogging
into an open messaging platform would need to look beyond just integrating
sign ons. Think of smtp.

edit: I missed this <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenMicroBlogging>

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mtkd
There is certainly a dynamic with social sites that the 'next generation' want
to use something new - just like with music genres - you can't be cool
indefinitely.

The next generation may reject social altogether - and not want to be tracked
and recorded 24/7.

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keiferski
This is definitely an underemphasized point. It could turn out like the
radical 60s and subsequent conservative backlash of the 80s.

It will eventually get old, either from a quick death (rejection of social
altogether) or a slow death (commodification; Facebook/social media becoming a
platform, like email).

~~~
rwmj
Except "60s" -> "80s" in around 6 months instead of 20 years.

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6ren
> social media users are fickle, disloyal at the drop of a hat

I don't know about this.

Firstly, I would have thought _search_ users would be fickle; but people stick
to Google: familiarity is a huge factor for mainstream _consumer_ franchises
(Buffett goes on about Coke, Wrigly Chewing Gum etc) as opposed to early-
adopter tech folk; Google goes to enormous lengths for good PR and visibility
(mainly by actually doing good, which is nice); despite complaints, Google
does its job (relevant results; very fast), and keeps improving. If a
commodity like _search_ can be sticky, why not social media?

Secondly, a social networking service is intrinsically harder for users to
change, because you are connected to other people. Of course, it has to do its
basic job well; you have to keep improving it; you need good PR. In other
words, it's your game to lose.

I'm not sure why MySpace failed, but I think part of it was targeting
teens/young people (who like change, both in adopting the new and in then
discarding it), e.g. via bands, which is also hit/fad oriented. I think
facebook's uni students are less dangerous in this sense, because they more
often want to keep in contact after graduating (compared with teenagers), and
facebook have worked hard to grow out of that dangerously fashionable zone
anyway.

warning: this post contains _guesses_.

~~~
minalecs
i think that utility is different from social. Search is a utility that
competitors have offered incremental improvements, that while useful.. to most
people don't matter. Example: how many people test search results in multiple
engines, to determine which one is giving better results ?. At this time, on
any search engine, if you can find what you're looking for most of the time,
in the first few results, you just stick with it.

Where as social is just that its whats cool/hip and something your friends are
using. I think you underestimate the value of virility. Services like
Instagram and Tumblr, are all very good services that are social and could
possibly unseat what we see now. People and not just in the tech circle are
always trying out new cool/hip social services. If some users think its cool,
convince their friends to join and the cycle starts over.

~~~
6ren
> I think you underestimate the value of virility.

Maybe. I think it varies with age group, as I was saying. I think people in
their teen's and 20's are more interested in what's cool/hip. Certainly, for
social services in that teen/20's demographic, I think you're right.

Older people, people with spouses, people with young children, people with
mortgages, people with established careers and groups of friends and clubs and
routines. Well, I think maybe the value of virility is less there. I'm not
saying it's a good thing.

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atacrawl
The difference between Twitter and MySpace is that MySpace was a colossal
piece of shit. It was ugly, poorly built, and most importantly, lacked the
timeline feature that best illustrates what a social networking site is
supposed to do -- keep you informed on what your friends are doing.

Twitter is already boiled down to its essence.

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fooandbarify
Sure. Facebook could be "MySpaced", too. The whole point of what happened to
MySpace is that it was hard to figure out what it would take to disrupt them
until it happened.

~~~
noahc
It's hard to know what will disrupt them. But, it seems there is a formula.

1\. Pick a niche (college kids)

2\. Build what they want

3\. Let it trickle down (high school) or up (grandma) or out (businesses) to
gain mass.

So while we can't pick the winner, we know what the winner is going to do.

~~~
fooandbarify
While that approach obviously worked for Facebook, I think this is one of
those areas where it's hard to pin down a "formula" that will work in every
case without eventually having it be proven wrong in a big way. In this case,
for example, it is conceivable (although maybe unlikely) that another major
player such as Google or Facebook could disrupt Twitter by starting big. In
other words, rather than targeting a niche until they gain mass, they could
somehow leverage their existing mass to get ahead.

~~~
noahc
It is interesting that you point that out. I had typed that out and then
deleted it. Basically, Google is starting backwards with gmail being used by
everyone and then trying to build what a particular niche wants.

I think the problem here is that when you start big and work backwards it's
hard to build exactly what a particular niche wants. For example, starting
backwards you never would have built the perfect tool for bands (myspace) or
college kids (facebook) because you want it to have mass appeal.

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raquo
What I don't like in twitter is how non-obvious and inconvenient it is.

E.g. the only way to communicate with someone without polluting your timeline
(because who really cares what you @replied to someone) is DMing them, and
even that is less convenient than even facebook messages. But no one uses DMs
for most conversations so I have to go without following some awesome people
just because they @reply massively and I have scroll fatigue already.

Another example – twitter's website has no new @mention notifications, and my
SO accidentally discovered this feature when she downloaded Tweetie months
after she started tweeting.

No wonder twitter's user retention rate sucks.

~~~
ugh
But @replies don’t show up in your timeline unless you are following both
sides of the exchange, right?

~~~
raquo
Does not seem right. See <http://twitter.com/#!/shauninman> for example

I see a lot of Shaun's tweets starting with @someuser, e.g.
<http://twitter.com/#!/shauninman/status/59266889741905920>
<http://twitter.com/#!/shauninman/status/59254473125666816>
<http://twitter.com/#!/shauninman/status/59237467353657344>
<http://twitter.com/#!/shauninman/status/58999188649807872> and I don't follow
him or any of these guys

~~~
rsoto
Yes, because it's his public timeline. But you will not see @replies from
people you are not following in your timeline.

~~~
raquo
Um, thanks, I'll check that! Still, I think it's unintuitive. There's no way I
could figure this out from twitter's UI, if only somehow by accident.

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nikcub
"be bloggered" would be more approp

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aneth
Twitter is a seriously rough and immature tool. It has no ability to
intelligently handle identity or content types. It's confusing to many people,
and generally has a style that will quickly appear dated once a well designed
alternative gains critical mass.

A few years ago, the micro-blogging community was not big enough for a second
player. Now it is, and Twitter will change or be overtaken by a more
compelling alternative.

The simplicity of Twitter was once its strength, but like any technology, it
must grow to meet the demands of its users. Facebook added chat, photos, a
compelling platform, etc... Twitter is dead in the water right now.

Who wants to remember silly @handles? There isn't even a directory of official
Twitter handles for companies.

Private group message applications are sprouting up everywhere - Twitter is
just plodding along unaware that this is a huge need.

Who wants to see hideous bit.ly links instead of actual content?

Is 140 characters really the future? I doubt it.

Are third party services really necessary to embed media? Do users really need
to figure out how to tape together 10 different services and clients to get a
good experience?

Twitter needs to grow up, or it will die. And it will happen quickly - less
than two years from the day a serious competitor gains steam.

~~~
wyclif
Has anyone else noticed, in the recent spate of HN submissions on choosing
company names and the matching domain name for startups that founders are
saying things like, "check to see if the name is available on Twitter; if not
you'll need to choose again."

That's amusing, but unacceptable given the large amount of squatting on
Twitter. Anyone here have any luck getting a company name from Twitter when it
was squatted?

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georgieporgie
I have a continual internal struggle between two competing thoughts:

1) Internet social media is a young, rapidly evolving ecosystem, heading
towards better understanding of consumers, better solutions, and longer
product lifetimes.

2) Internet social media is basically entertainment, where sites, platforms,
and communication strategies rise and fall in popularity like yesterday's
television shows and networks, but on a much, much shorter timeline.

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Humourisok
If new services will suggest open TOS with clear promise to keep them as is,
they have good chance. Developers.

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MenaMena123
I think Twitter could just be a management problem and can be easily fixed.
MySpace was poor management and a poor website, Twitter is actual cool. You
can talk about how Twitter shuts off alot and can be created better, but in
reality normal users dont care what you created it with, if it looks cool and
works most of the time, its good to go.

