Twitter, its phases and its problems, in El País
Rosa Jiménez Cano, a journalist at Spain’s leading daily El País, contacted me earlier in the week asking for my opinion on the changes, future, strengths, and weaknesses of Twitter after a recent report by Deutsche Bank recommended buying shares in the company. The title of the article was “Twitter users, why are you leaving?” (pdf available in Spanish and in Portuguese).
My impression, despite data that shows that a percentage of Twitter users are inactive, is that this is a problem to do with development phases, and that will be cured over time. Twitter is not like other applications: it is a very different social network, and is more like a communication channel.
A large number of users are still not sure how to respond to such an asymmetric form of communication, and don’t really know how to use it. The large number of cases of what might be called a slough of inactivity after opening accounts, attracted by the publicity it gets, would seem to indicate it takes some time to work out how to get the most from it.
With this in mind, the fact that mass uptake takes time, or that use levels do not grow uniformly is simply a reflection of Twitter’s characteristics, but that works out as more and more users get benefits from it, a use that allows them, for example, to keep up to date on things that interest them, to follow people they are interested in, or in general to find any of the other value proposals that Twitter undoubtedly has.
Because in reality, Twitter is what you want it to be: if you open boring accounts, it will be boring. If you follow well-informed people and quality information channels, Twitter is a source of information. If you follow your friends, it is simply a way of keeping up with what they are doing. Equally, it can be a tool for developing your personal brand, or to let the world know what you are thinking or writing about, or a way of feeling that you are in touch with somebody you admire, or a way of sharing what you have seen on television, or a way of campaigning about an issue, or… Twitter is the sum of the accounts that we decide to feed out timeline with, and doesn’t necessarily respond to a single use model. And as its popularity grows, it attracts new groups in society who find new uses for it. I might be wrong, but I have no doubts about the future of this company, and despite the problems that have been flagged up, I think it is still a tool that is growing in use.
Below, my reply to Rosa’s email:
The best thing one can say about Twitter is that it is the company that has best shown itself able to create an efficient ecosystem for conversation, and has become the place where everything that is going on in the world can be found. If you are somebody looking to communicate, or you are a brand looking to talk to your users, or a company that wants to talk about itself, Twitter is quite simply somewhere you have to be: it offers an effort-results ratio that is unbeatable. In just a few years, Twitter has shown itself able to develop that ecosystem and to develop marketing tools to exploit that in a profitable way, without hassling people. It has a brilliant future: its users adore it, it is not showing any signs of fatigue, and has every chance to continue attracting new user segments.
(En español, aquí)
