Twitter Was So Last Quarter
Perhaps it is me.
But it sure seems like Twitter conversations are decreasing.
I really like Twitter – I think it is great. It filled an important hole in the communications puzzle. But for some reason the volume is decreasing.
I am not talking about aggregate volume. New folks are discovering Twitter every day. I am talking about a decrease in Tweets per user. I am willing to share my hunch, but I am not willing to collect all the data by counting tweets and comparing.
It just seems to me the actual conversations over Twitter are declining. Personally, I keep Tweetdeck running on one of my monitors. When I checking my email, I quickly scan the various columns pretty regularly.
However, while traveling for three weeks last month, I effectively dropped Twitter. I managed to login and do email every few days, but Twitter was easily dismissed. Not responding to Email is bad, disappearing on Twitter is harmless. Most don’t even notice. No one catches all your Tweets and no one expects all Tweets to be caught. I discovered I could go from Twitter junkie to no Twitter overnight without any withdrawls or reprecussions. Hmmm.
Business has been slow this year, but on most fronts things are picking up. Could Twitter have been a way to pass the time?
Twitter reminds me a bit of the soap opera we (the dorm) watched back in college. I was a General Hospital Junkie for at least two semesters (scheduled classes around it). I knew all the characters and plot twists. But when more interesting things came up – I didn’t miss it. Even worse, I was able to follow the show for years with an occasional episode here and there. The characters were still there – missing a few affairs made no matter.
There was some conversation a few months ago about how foolish Twitter is for not accepting any of the investment advances from Facebook, Apple, or Google. The point was that technology trends change very quickly (Myspace). Twitter isn’t making money andFacebook is hot on their heels. They are getting huge valuations based on some future business model that may never exist. Just like when companies announce positive earnings and their stock goes down – sometimes the high point is the potential – not the reality.
Twitter is really neat. But so was my Palm Pilot and my Motorola alpha-numeric pager.
I am not done with Twitter. I like it a lot. I’ve met some great people on Twitter. I learn a lot of things from the smart and interestng people I follow. If anything this observation is a complaint. The smart and interesting people seem to be finding other things to do. I wish they would tweet what it is.
