Honestly, I don’t have a lot of faith in the future of Twitter. While I understand the capability for real-time microblogs, I see it as an interesting capability of a more extensive social networking site.
I am staying with Twitter to observe possible changes and how users are leveraging the tool. Right now, it appears to have a few key areas of focus:
1. Distribution of methods to make money on the internet
2. Moronic right wing insults to the current US president
3. Multiple repetitions of “best of” and “worst of” lists, which often link to marketing plans (see #1)
4. Self-important reaction to “issues”. For example, see #amazonfail. Twitterers will remember the campaign to get Amazon to either fail or fix itself or apologize or be more sincere or something. People outside of Twitter might remember that Amazon had a small issue with its rating systems and fixed it over the course of a few days. They might also remember some news coverage of Twitter people who thought that this technical issue should be the end of the world for the company.
5. Uninformed comment. To use the same example, Amazon, the tweets advising Amazon on the strategy it needed to take unless it wanted Twitter users to bring down the company did not come from experienced executives. It came from self-described experts in social media or blogging or nothing at all. In all cases, the advice came from people who did not, in fact, know what the issue was that caused problems but who discussed it continuously.
Twitter can be fun. Twitter can be useful in finding Korean tacos in Los Angeles and its vicinity. Twitter can be a useful part of customer service.
Let’s see where it goes.