In the battle to replace Twitter, no winners emerge
September 18, 2008
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Social media geeks, myself included, have been looking for/waiting for the “Twitter Killer” to emerge over the last few months. While Twitter’s famous crashes seem to have lessened, the stream of consciousness style doesn’t seem to facilitate effective conversations as well as we might hope.
- In July of 2007, we pownced on Pownce.
- In March of 2008, we began to Plurk.
- In July, we turned to Identi.ca.
- Last month, we looked at newcomer Rejaw.
- This week, the chatter is about Fidj.it.
I even wrote a very positive review of Rejaw, and I still think it’s the best of the bunch in terms of functionality. The chart below shows the spikes in traffic that each of these sites have enjoyed:
The Pownce bounce was the highest for a long time (in July 2007, it was about 250,000), but Plurk passed it a year later with their debut, which was well-timed in the midst of severe Twitter outages.
All of this is impressive, however, only until you add the king of the area, Twitter, to the chart:
Suddenly, things don’t look so impressive for the Twitter competitors. It’s clear in talking to people (and reading mainstream publications), that Twitter has crossed over into the mainstream. That’s going to be tough for the other folks to beat.
When we look at the competitor’s daily velocity on Compete (meaning a snapshot of whether they are growing by day or shrinking by day), we don’t see much good news here either. Over the last 45 days, Pownce had some growth toward the end of August, and Plurk’s had some very minor spikes, but since September 1, Plurk, Identi.ca and Pownce are all in negative territory. I see others talking about fatigue from trying all these sites and I’ve personally used them all a lot less in the last few weeks as client needs continue to grow.
At the end of the day, though, technology is one thing, while community is another. Anyone building one of these apps needs as much emphasis on attracting users as building the site, because we’re well best build it and it will come.
What do you think? What’s your favorite micro-blogging site? Are you starting to see some fatigue in keeping up with all these locations? Let me know what you’re seeing.
Comments
4 Responses to “In the battle to replace Twitter, no winners emerge”
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Hi Jim,
Great post … I love statistics like these… They confirm my theory about the social media technology bubble that is about to burst.
In servicing our own business as well as clients we have a strong need to streamline our effort and then leverage that effort as effectively as possible.
In my experience, one micro-blogging site is enough because Twitter dominates. Most micro-bloggers are already on Twitter so the need to reach out to the same users on other platforms is redundant. The effort to squeeze a few new followers in smaller platforms is equal to the effort expended on other networks (with higher market share) yet it is less effective… What’s the point?
Much like there is no need to optimize for any search engine other than Google, the same is true for much of the social technologies. If 80% of your market uses Facebook then why use another?
There is a need to reach out on niche networks, of course, but I suggest paying attention to why you are really using the networks you participate in… Here’s the big question…
Are you networking with people or are you just trying to “build a friends list”?
If it is the latter then you are going to grow very fatigued and will see little result from your effort.
Charles Heflin
Twitter @CharlesHeflin
I am one of those to sign up for just about any new service getting some notice but I admit I’m pretty much stuck on Twitter. Plurk is interesting with it’s time line and threaded posts but scrolling sideways is also annoying. I’m used to Twitter and now have well over 500 followers. Why should I start over somewhere else? I think instead of all of us out here constantly trying new things and getting fatigue some of these ventures should swallow their pride and think about some mergers.
Why do we need Twitter, Rejaw, Plurk when they are all doing pretty much the same thing?
As an overall general micro-blogging service I would like to see Twitter buy Rejaw and maybe Plurk.
I love the concept of Yammer which is like Twitter for a business or organization. I have wanted that for a long time but would love to see it have some of the same functionality as Pownce which I have an account for as well but don’t use.
Patrick’s last blog post..Are your morning “blog biscuits” canned or homemade?
I wrote a post a few months back about international micro-blogs, one in particular from india, that has WAY more users then twitter. More about it here: http://sniki.org/gupshup
Desarae A. Veit’s last blog post..Social MEdia Video
Twitter (I blog about them often) already won this (CONSUMER) space, after all you go where you friends are. The REAL Twitter killer will come in the form of one of the many enterprise Twitter clones that pop up every from small Yammer.com to large IBM & Oracle.
From a feature standpoint, I will give Twitter time as they are still a 1.0 product. Likely one of their API partners will supply all the functionality I am craving.
www.twitter.com/A_F
Andy Finkle’s last blog post..Twitter - It’s really about your EGO!