Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Twitter is Fucking Stupid and We All Know It

Update several years later (March 2010):

Twitter is 'hot', but it's still dumb. But what the hell do I know?

I'm old.



Twitter has to be a top contender for the future poster child of Web 2.0. So I'm sure they'll get bought for millions by some moron. Ok... so let's see... a 'service' that let's you txt your 'friends' with pointless info about what you're doing. Ahh... how cool is that!

For the love of the sweet baby jesus why is this interesting to anyone over the age of 12?

You've got email, IM, sms and all that other stuff... so why not just send your buddies a constant stream of updates via one of those? Thats right, because they'd quickly get tired of you. So at least with Twitter they can ignore you guilt free. "Yeah John, I've got your twitter feed right in my bloglines.. you're trip to the dentist was like performance haiku... ". Now that's some value proposition for the biz plan!

How is twitter going to make any money? Ads? Perhaps, although there's little reason to visit the twitter website when you've got the feed. what else? dunno (I guess I'm not creative enough).

About the only thing left is to get VC funding or get 'big' enough that some larger company will buy you.

A) VC/Angel Funding - Great way to get paid while you screw around and build your resume. Double bonus if you can pontificate well enough to get noticed by digg or People who really really care about knitted AT-ATs! Triple bonus if you can get invited to speak to some Web 2.0 conferences. Just be sure to bail just before it becomes apparent to all that there is no business model, all your users get bored after a few weeks, and that the investors are out a few hundred thousand each (they tend to get cranky about this).

B) Strategic Buy Out - Now this is the new exit strategy of choice. If you get a little of A you don't even have to eat top ramen three times a day and your kids can get some shoes w/o holes in them. Just have to hang on long enough for the magic to happen. But you really need some marketing smarts to have any hope of this occurring. This option isn't about the tech (sorry geeks) it's about perception and user volume. So for get about scaling, just fake it long enough.

And it's not just me:

http://wisdump.com/web/twitters-is-dumb-but-im-stupid/

http://www.chrisknudsen.biz/305/if-i-used-twitter/

http://news.com.com/The+case+against+Twitter/2010-1038_3-6187291.html

And another one:

http://sheylara.com/2007/05/27/twitter-is-stupid-and-were-all-narcissists/


Here's a defense of it...

http://news.com.com/In+defense+of+Twitter/2010-1038_3-6187323.html

She's happy to get the assignment (and be paid), but not THAT happy.



I suppose I'm just annoyed I didn't think of it. Although if you set the bar this low... hum....

3 comments:

Chris Dowd said...

Thank you! I don't get it! I had been hearing about twitter for a couple of months now and I had only a vague idea of what it was about. So I checked it out and I was like . . . OK? How in the hell is this any better than an IM? Or group texting with your cell your phone? If you have a website- you can get people to subscribe via email.

This is the dumbest most pointless "innovation" I have ever seen. Great marketing people. Whatever Madison ave firm they got to get twitter viral- they did a great job. I mean it seemed that within weeks every teevee personality out there was mentioning twitter!

Twitter could be a stand in for America in general these days- all hype- no meat- empty bullshit.

Michael J Lawrence said...

I couldn't agree more. What's even more puzzling is seeing people I admire (in politics, entertainment, the arts, whatever) who apparently love Twitter and use it frequently. How do they sustain this activity over weeks, months and years? Wherever they go, whatever they're doing in life?

My prediction is that over time, the average age of Twitter users will fall and fall until it is about 12 years old.

Michael J Lawrence said...

I couldn't agree more. What's even more puzzling is seeing people I admire (in politics, entertainment, the arts, whatever) who apparently love Twitter and use it frequently. How do they sustain this activity over weeks, months and years? Wherever they go, whatever they're doing in life?

My prediction is that over time, the average age of Twitter users will fall and fall until it is about 12 years old.