10 Twitter Predictions
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10 Predictions on the Future of Twitter
By Karim Gargum - www.KarimGargum.com
Copyright © 2009 Karim Gargum. All rights reserved.
Introduction This report contains 10 predictions on the potential future development of Twitter. Remember though, itʼs just my opinion, I might be wrong but I hope youʼll find my views in teresting in any case.
1) Twitter as a Search Engine As more and more users sign up to Twitter, the signal-tonoise ratio is dropping. Increasingly the only way users will be able to find useful information will be with Twitterʼs search tool. In an apparent realisation of this need to ʻfilterʼ Twitter content, the micro-blogging service has been developing and enhancing itʼs search feature, bringing it to the main Twitter.com website where previously it was only available at www.search.twitter.com. Over time this ʻsearchʼ aspect of Twitter will gain prominence and where-as the user interaction with Twitter now starts with the creation of a ʻTweetʼ, in the future a fat search box might replace the current status update form field as the intended first point of interaction with the site. Copyright © 2009 Karim Gargum. All rights reserved.
In addition to this, real time search engines like http://www.scoopler.com have already cropped up and are heavily leveraging the real-time search capabilities of Twitter and other social media websites.
2) Twitter to Menace Google Itʼs hard to imagine that any challengers could threaten Google, and even Twitter is a mere tadpole compared to the mighty Google. However, at Googleʼs recent ʻSearchologyʼ event, real-time search was listed as the number one challenge facing the search goliath. Twitter has a concrete advantage here, with results that are human-filtered and almost real time. Instead of directly attacking Google head on with a copy-cat search tool, Twitter search offers an adjacent and often more compelling search experience. With news, blog posts, blog comments and user generated content being constantly uploaded to the net, a search tool that focuses on sifting through this content and bringing users relevant and timely results has a lot of potential.
Copyright © 2009 Karim Gargum. All rights reserved.
3) Twitter Influence Gap to Widen With the number of celebrities flocking to Twitter, the gap between an average Twitter user and the ʻTwitterattiʼ (Twitter users with huge followings) is growing wider and wider. Statistics from Twitter itself have shown that increasingly large number of users who join the service are abandoning due to their inability to effectively leverage the tool. The user-base could also become split into three general groups of users: • Sifters or Searchers - they use Twitter primarily for news/info gathering. They likely see little point to ʻTweetingʼ are are akin to ʻlurkersʼ on online forums and blogs. • Broadcasters - Twitter users with huge followings that arenʼt expected or are unable to interact with their follow ers. They use Twitter more as a one way medium. • Cat Bloggers - People who will continue to Tweet about the inane day to day events of their lives perhaps relying on a group of ʻreal worldʼ friends amongst their followers
Copyright © 2009 Karim Gargum. All rights reserved.
4) Rise of Automation As the ʻTwitterattiʼ gain increasingly huge audiences the strain of updating their Twitter profiles will most likely drive them to use a selection of 3rd party tools based on Twitterʼs API. Tools such as ʻTweetLaterʼ ʻTwitterFeedʼ and ʻTwallowʼ can automate messages to new followers, generate Twitter stream contact and even automatically follow users that are interested in your particular area of expertise. The rise in the use of these Automated tools diminishes the level of genuine human interaction on Twitter, one of the original main attractions of the service. To add insult to injury, some extremely popular Twitter users also employ ʻGhostʼ twitterers to update their profiles for them, further distancing their audience.
Copyright © 2009 Karim Gargum. All rights reserved.
5) Twitter as a News Powerhouse One of the fastest, most comprehensive, most accurate sources of breaking news recently has been twitter. It has proved itself consistently as an excellent news source. Not only do all the major international news outlets and publishers reference their latest items on twitter, Citizen Journalism has been given a tremendous boost from Twitter. Accounts from Twitter users caught up in plane crashes, terror attacks and natural disasters have revolutionised the way we are made aware of international events, dissolving the typical distance and lack of emotion epitomised by conventional newscasts. How twitter will take advantage of this will be interesting, itʼs a great case of technology evolving in ways perhaps not predicted by its creators.
Copyright © 2009 Karim Gargum. All rights reserved.
6) Twitter ʻGated Communitiesʼ Thanks to intensive media attention, huge amounts of new users have been pouring into Twitter. Anecdotally, it seems the general sentiment among the original generation of Twitter users is that twitter has lost itʼs cozy, small-town vibe. This might lead Twitter to enable users to establish ʻgated communitiesʼ. Just as some users now can secure their updates, it could be possible for Twitter to develop functionality that would enable a group of Twitter users to set up a community of Twitterers that require registration to access their collective updates. One example of this is www.twittermoms.com. This massive influx of Twitter users and reduction of quality content might also lead other companies to develop nichebased Twitter clones. Technologically this would be relatively straight forward. In fact some sites like LinkedIn would probably be very well places to launch a service along these lines considering they have already established a relatively transparent and authentic network of users.
Copyright © 2009 Karim Gargum. All rights reserved.
7) Twitter to Fracture As mentioned above, Twitter has the potential to be used in various different ways. This presents a wide range of challenging strategic options for the companyʼs future de velopment. Itʼs feasible that Twitter could fracture out into various sub-services, e.g Search and News. This isnʼt that surprising when we look at Twitter as a protocol through which many types of information can be delivered effectively. For example www.stocktwits.com uses the Twitter platform to deliver and aggregate investment related information. Similar services for news, entertainment and sports are equally feasible and probably in existence already. This strength of Twitter, is also a vulnerability. Other online sites can quite easily replicate the ʻmicro-bloggingʼ func tionality of the site. Recently, Google Readerʼs addition of comments has highlighted this, the development of a family of Twitter powered services could help stave off these competitors.
Copyright © 2009 Karim Gargum. All rights reserved.
8) Powered By Twitter The number of Twitter tools and add-ons is huge and growing almost exponentially. Services such as those mentioned above www.stocktwits.com, www.twittermoms.com and Microsoftʼs www.exectweets.com will most likely pave the way for other prominent companies to develop and deploying Twitter powered websites and online services in the future.
9) Twitter Pro There have been many rumours regarding the introduction of a Twitter Pro account, the likely features of which remain elusive, but itʼs certain that issues like security, automation, better user/follower interaction and Twitter activity statistics will be high on the list. Creating a pro class of users might limit opportunities for amateur Twitter users to build larger followings, with users of the future perceiving ʻproʼ users as more reliable sources of content. This is comparable to Googleʼs trend in recent years to up-weight content from better established brands. Creating a Twitter pro user group will also provide a robust business model allowing Twitter to expand and develop its infrastructure hopefully limiting the intermittent but annoying downtime it currently suffers from.
Copyright © 2009 Karim Gargum. All rights reserved.
10) Beyond 140 Characters Itʼs possible that Twitter might break this key element of its DNA, the 140 character limit on user updates. If we look at services like www.twitpic.com as well as the amount of videos and other rich-media that users currently link to, it might serve Twitterʼs interest to start allowing the integration of these types of content directly into Twitter. This could potentially open up opportunities to compete with Flickr and Youtube. Twitter is really just a protocol as it currently stands. But itʼs a powerful one. If searching text strings of 140 charac ters in near real-time is interesting, accessing video/photo and even map locations could be even more interesting. Just as Google expanded from search to a family of complimentary products, there could be scope for Twitter to leverage their ʻsocial engineʼ to create a range of compli mentary online services. An email tool with a 140 character limit anyone? Ok, so these are so there you have it, 10 potential future trends for the worldʼs favourite micro-blogging tool. If you have any ideas or feedback (maybe Iʼve completely lost the plot with my predictions) please hit me up on Twitter youʼll find me at www.Twitter.com/@Kazimor.
Copyright © 2009 Karim Gargum. All rights reserved.
By Karim Gargum - www.KarimGargum.com
Copyright © 2009 Karim Gargum. All rights reserved.
Introduction This report contains 10 predictions on the potential future development of Twitter. Remember though, itʼs just my opinion, I might be wrong but I hope youʼll find my views in teresting in any case.
1) Twitter as a Search Engine As more and more users sign up to Twitter, the signal-tonoise ratio is dropping. Increasingly the only way users will be able to find useful information will be with Twitterʼs search tool. In an apparent realisation of this need to ʻfilterʼ Twitter content, the micro-blogging service has been developing and enhancing itʼs search feature, bringing it to the main Twitter.com website where previously it was only available at www.search.twitter.com. Over time this ʻsearchʼ aspect of Twitter will gain prominence and where-as the user interaction with Twitter now starts with the creation of a ʻTweetʼ, in the future a fat search box might replace the current status update form field as the intended first point of interaction with the site. Copyright © 2009 Karim Gargum. All rights reserved.
In addition to this, real time search engines like http://www.scoopler.com have already cropped up and are heavily leveraging the real-time search capabilities of Twitter and other social media websites.
2) Twitter to Menace Google Itʼs hard to imagine that any challengers could threaten Google, and even Twitter is a mere tadpole compared to the mighty Google. However, at Googleʼs recent ʻSearchologyʼ event, real-time search was listed as the number one challenge facing the search goliath. Twitter has a concrete advantage here, with results that are human-filtered and almost real time. Instead of directly attacking Google head on with a copy-cat search tool, Twitter search offers an adjacent and often more compelling search experience. With news, blog posts, blog comments and user generated content being constantly uploaded to the net, a search tool that focuses on sifting through this content and bringing users relevant and timely results has a lot of potential.
Copyright © 2009 Karim Gargum. All rights reserved.
3) Twitter Influence Gap to Widen With the number of celebrities flocking to Twitter, the gap between an average Twitter user and the ʻTwitterattiʼ (Twitter users with huge followings) is growing wider and wider. Statistics from Twitter itself have shown that increasingly large number of users who join the service are abandoning due to their inability to effectively leverage the tool. The user-base could also become split into three general groups of users: • Sifters or Searchers - they use Twitter primarily for news/info gathering. They likely see little point to ʻTweetingʼ are are akin to ʻlurkersʼ on online forums and blogs. • Broadcasters - Twitter users with huge followings that arenʼt expected or are unable to interact with their follow ers. They use Twitter more as a one way medium. • Cat Bloggers - People who will continue to Tweet about the inane day to day events of their lives perhaps relying on a group of ʻreal worldʼ friends amongst their followers
Copyright © 2009 Karim Gargum. All rights reserved.
4) Rise of Automation As the ʻTwitterattiʼ gain increasingly huge audiences the strain of updating their Twitter profiles will most likely drive them to use a selection of 3rd party tools based on Twitterʼs API. Tools such as ʻTweetLaterʼ ʻTwitterFeedʼ and ʻTwallowʼ can automate messages to new followers, generate Twitter stream contact and even automatically follow users that are interested in your particular area of expertise. The rise in the use of these Automated tools diminishes the level of genuine human interaction on Twitter, one of the original main attractions of the service. To add insult to injury, some extremely popular Twitter users also employ ʻGhostʼ twitterers to update their profiles for them, further distancing their audience.
Copyright © 2009 Karim Gargum. All rights reserved.
5) Twitter as a News Powerhouse One of the fastest, most comprehensive, most accurate sources of breaking news recently has been twitter. It has proved itself consistently as an excellent news source. Not only do all the major international news outlets and publishers reference their latest items on twitter, Citizen Journalism has been given a tremendous boost from Twitter. Accounts from Twitter users caught up in plane crashes, terror attacks and natural disasters have revolutionised the way we are made aware of international events, dissolving the typical distance and lack of emotion epitomised by conventional newscasts. How twitter will take advantage of this will be interesting, itʼs a great case of technology evolving in ways perhaps not predicted by its creators.
Copyright © 2009 Karim Gargum. All rights reserved.
6) Twitter ʻGated Communitiesʼ Thanks to intensive media attention, huge amounts of new users have been pouring into Twitter. Anecdotally, it seems the general sentiment among the original generation of Twitter users is that twitter has lost itʼs cozy, small-town vibe. This might lead Twitter to enable users to establish ʻgated communitiesʼ. Just as some users now can secure their updates, it could be possible for Twitter to develop functionality that would enable a group of Twitter users to set up a community of Twitterers that require registration to access their collective updates. One example of this is www.twittermoms.com. This massive influx of Twitter users and reduction of quality content might also lead other companies to develop nichebased Twitter clones. Technologically this would be relatively straight forward. In fact some sites like LinkedIn would probably be very well places to launch a service along these lines considering they have already established a relatively transparent and authentic network of users.
Copyright © 2009 Karim Gargum. All rights reserved.
7) Twitter to Fracture As mentioned above, Twitter has the potential to be used in various different ways. This presents a wide range of challenging strategic options for the companyʼs future de velopment. Itʼs feasible that Twitter could fracture out into various sub-services, e.g Search and News. This isnʼt that surprising when we look at Twitter as a protocol through which many types of information can be delivered effectively. For example www.stocktwits.com uses the Twitter platform to deliver and aggregate investment related information. Similar services for news, entertainment and sports are equally feasible and probably in existence already. This strength of Twitter, is also a vulnerability. Other online sites can quite easily replicate the ʻmicro-bloggingʼ func tionality of the site. Recently, Google Readerʼs addition of comments has highlighted this, the development of a family of Twitter powered services could help stave off these competitors.
Copyright © 2009 Karim Gargum. All rights reserved.
8) Powered By Twitter The number of Twitter tools and add-ons is huge and growing almost exponentially. Services such as those mentioned above www.stocktwits.com, www.twittermoms.com and Microsoftʼs www.exectweets.com will most likely pave the way for other prominent companies to develop and deploying Twitter powered websites and online services in the future.
9) Twitter Pro There have been many rumours regarding the introduction of a Twitter Pro account, the likely features of which remain elusive, but itʼs certain that issues like security, automation, better user/follower interaction and Twitter activity statistics will be high on the list. Creating a pro class of users might limit opportunities for amateur Twitter users to build larger followings, with users of the future perceiving ʻproʼ users as more reliable sources of content. This is comparable to Googleʼs trend in recent years to up-weight content from better established brands. Creating a Twitter pro user group will also provide a robust business model allowing Twitter to expand and develop its infrastructure hopefully limiting the intermittent but annoying downtime it currently suffers from.
Copyright © 2009 Karim Gargum. All rights reserved.
10) Beyond 140 Characters Itʼs possible that Twitter might break this key element of its DNA, the 140 character limit on user updates. If we look at services like www.twitpic.com as well as the amount of videos and other rich-media that users currently link to, it might serve Twitterʼs interest to start allowing the integration of these types of content directly into Twitter. This could potentially open up opportunities to compete with Flickr and Youtube. Twitter is really just a protocol as it currently stands. But itʼs a powerful one. If searching text strings of 140 charac ters in near real-time is interesting, accessing video/photo and even map locations could be even more interesting. Just as Google expanded from search to a family of complimentary products, there could be scope for Twitter to leverage their ʻsocial engineʼ to create a range of compli mentary online services. An email tool with a 140 character limit anyone? Ok, so these are so there you have it, 10 potential future trends for the worldʼs favourite micro-blogging tool. If you have any ideas or feedback (maybe Iʼve completely lost the plot with my predictions) please hit me up on Twitter youʼll find me at www.Twitter.com/@Kazimor.
Copyright © 2009 Karim Gargum. All rights reserved.
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