Will @wossy break Twitter?
The Birmingham Post has been dropping hints about Twitter (the microblogging / messaging tool) for some time - reminding you that it's the first place you'll get to know of breaking news stories, saying that it's good for networking and trying to persuade you that it's fun. The big paper has covered it sensibly, unlike the Mail on Sunday who decided that their readerships' first introduction should be a shock horror piece on how Jonathan Ross was "wasting his time" while suspended from the BBC.
Jonathan Ross, or @wossy as he is on Twitter is continuing in the vein of Stephen Fry. He's using Twitter just as anyone should - posting his updates himself, just saying what he thinks is interesting at the time and most importantly joining in the conversation. This is of course more difficult for "celebrities" as they will soon get a lot more people talking to them than they could ever listen to or answer, but both Ross and Fry have done it brilliantly. They tend to respond to the "gist" of comments in a way that everyone can feel it's an answer for them, but when the fancy takes them they will respond directly.
Wossy is also providing a valuable service, he's become what I'm referring too as the Celebrity Twitter Police. After a number of high-profile fakes - Tony Benn was reported to be on Twitter, but when asked by our Midlands twittering MP Tom Watson had never heard of it - Jonathan is taking it upon himself to phone up "his mates" and ask if people twittering in their names are really them. He's so far outed an Eddie Izzard and a Jeremy Clarkson as fakes. Unfortunately after explaining what Twitter was to Clarkson, "Jezza" has said he might sign-up for real. So it's not all good.
Like a reformed smoker, the new adopter of technology like Twitter - especially if they've been welcomed with such enthusiasm - wants to get everyone using it. That's great when it includes such obvious wit as Russell Brand, but more dangerously he might push Twitter mainstream by mentioning it on his comeback TV show. With one of the guests being fellow twit Stephen Fry it'd be odd if it doesn't come up (although it's not sure to make the edit).
So will a potential avalanche of new users make Twitter unusable? It might.
Up till this point every online social network has experience a steep growth curve - as people join and invite their friends - and then reached a point where use actually falls. People don't tend to delete accounts, but just drift off and move onto the next network.
There are a couple of reasons for this: the thrill of something new, maybe the network has better tools or has a more suitable layout (Facebook's clean look was much more suitable than Myspace for "grown-ups"). But the main reason has very little to do with our online personas, and everything to do with how we interact with real people.
There's a number called Dunbar's Number (it's cited to be around 150, but isn't strictly defined) and it reflects the limit to the number of people with which you can maintain social relationships. Online you might find this number slightly higher, you may just be good at "maintaining social relationships" or you may be able to "keep in touch" with more people if many of them don't spend much time on that particular social network. But eventually your network size will strain at Dunbar's Number and you'll have to start making decisions:
"Do I accept that friend request? I don't really know them well, but don't like to offend them by ignoring it." "Can I delete the contact that I don't talk to as much any more? But they'll know I have, I can't just casually drift off." "I don't really like that bloke from work, but it'll be awkward if I don't accept him as a friend"
And the easiest decision is not to use that social network, no more complicated bits of social etiquette to fall over. So people are off to BookFace or MyThing or whatever is next.
This is on top of the fact that "going mainstream" attracts the marketeers - both the spammers and those who would think that they work in honest PR. Very few people understand the lightness of touch and conversational tone needed to "talk product" in social networks, and it upsets the users. See www.howtousetwitterformarketingandpr.com to see just how much.
People use Twitter for all sorts of things, to keep in touch with trends or the news, to talk and relive the stresses they encounter, even just for a fun end in itself like the pantomime we had just before Christmas - and the ways that the use it are easily broken by a large influx of new users.
So, will Jonathan Ross break Twitter - if he does I'll be leaving a message on his anwering machine.
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Really interesting post but I'm surprised you care whether twitter gets broken. I'm not sure I do. If it does get broken then that just signals a time to move on to the next thing that's worth adopting. Twitter's functionality is great but I doubt it can't be superseded by something just as useful. We don't love one particular technology that much do we?
But even if there is a large influx Twitter seems more manageable, and therefore less 'breakable', than other forms of social media. I will only ever follow the numbers I can deal with even if every single one of my old school friends decides to come out of the woodwork (as is the case with Facebook at the moment).
Social Media has such an ebb and flow of applications that some will inevitably get elevated to the mainstream and may become less useful as a result. I'm not sure I care about any individual one enough to worry about it.
I suppose I care because at the moment I don't see anything else with the functionality nor the ease of use that Twitter offers.
MySpace, Facebook etc never really interested me that much, but Twitter has just the right balance of interesting debate, and complete nonsense.
Twitter is a little different from the networks that preceded it because - right from the start - it made the differentiation between following and being followed clear. That's why it may be the first to survive the "mainstream moment".
That said, I spend a lot of time worrying about how my actions affect other people, if not "following" seems rude it will upset me for a bit - eventually that will build up to a service that's not worth the hassle - which is a shame.
And of course the answering machine remark was too good to not finish with ;)
I can't see Twitter going mainstream. This is fortunate because I think it would kill it outright. Or at least warp it beyond all recognition.
Twitter seems to be a community rather than a technology. Twitterers tweet to other tweeterers in the tweetsphere. We creatively build on it, discuss it and converge on our own conventions and notations within it. That's its unique and wonderful charm.
Social utilities such as SMS, e-mail and even Facebook make do with users. Mere users wouldn't take the trouble to organise a #twitpanto or #twestival. The 'biggest group on facebook' doesn't count.
Communities like Twitter, Flickr, deviantART, Ravelry, HomeOfPoi and countless others thrive exactly because they occupy specific niches. I'll always be thankful to Facebook for giving my friends a proper place to dump 120 indistinguishable party pics other than Flickr.
Hilarious; Twitter is mainstream when Wossy is on it and Barack Obama uses it to push his campaign message(s).
Dumping SMS updates outside of the USA doesn't seem to have stopped twitters growth either: http://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/entry/no_outbound_twitter_for_europe
Twitter will not 'break' it'll go down cause of concurrency and volume of usage, they'll add infrastructure and it'll be back up.
The bigger, and more interesting, questions are; when are they going to start hitting major revenue streams before running out of cash to pay for the additional infrastructure above (when they'll just throttle the service and your tweets will be a day late, like SMS providers now) and what will eventually supersede twitter.
@Wayne I think there's a big difference in political campaigns using something (especially when they are explicitly attempting to engage people that wouldn't normally be politically aware) and well known (but mainstream) people actually using the service themselves (with no adgenda) and talking about it.
When I said "break" I certainly didn't mean in terms of infrastructure - hell, a mediorcre MacWorld will "break" twitter for a day or so - more render some of what has made it interesting thus far unusable.
I'm actually starting to see "microblogging" (or Twitter for shorthand as it's by far the only well-used service at the moment) as something more akin to a communication channel - more analogous with TV, Radio, Telephone, Letter or SMS than with "social networks" - so whatever happens technically it may survive. Or it might still be more like CB radio.
@Wayne I think there's a big difference in political campaigns using something (especially when they are explicitly attempting to engage people that wouldn't normally be politically aware) and well known (but mainstream) people actually using the service themselves (with no adgenda) and talking about it.
When I said "break" I certainly didn't mean in terms of infrastructure - hell, a mediorcre MacWorld will "break" twitter for a day or so - more render some of what has made it interesting thus far unusable.
I'm actually starting to see "microblogging" (or Twitter for shorthand as it's by far the only well-used service at the moment) as something more akin to a communication channel - more analogous with TV, Radio, Telephone, Letter or SMS than with "social networks" - so whatever happens technically it may survive. Or it might still be more like CB radio.
RE: Wossy uncovering fakes, very amusing! No doubt he'll be discussing this when he's back on tv!