Is America Rooting for a Twitter Downfall? Some Evidence. | Hacker News Reader

Is America Rooting for a Twitter Downfall? Some Evidence.

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30 pointsrobertjmoore8 comments

Media fallout from new data that highlighted Twitter's churn rate.

Facebook took it's core function and made it better; added threaded comments. Thus to the many who never used Twitter now they don't see why they would. Everyone they know is on Facebook and it's a more private network. My mom, her friends and others in that demographic were not on MySpace but they have been one of the fastest growing demos on Facebook (growth) if im not mistaken. This same demo as a whole want and are used to privacy. Doubtful, they'll flock to use Twitter ever.

Though Zuckerberg is pushing to be more like Twitter and he may have achieved such by fooling millions. Yes it was all over the news, but millions still don't understand nor cared to. Twitter on the other hand when understood is that you are saying random things openly to whoever and anyone can read it. That's not how people comprehend Facebook.

Zuckerberg's comments that people don't care about privacy was a bit surprising. His demographic might feel this way - but doubtful!

I know Facebook lets you comment on statuses, but comments aren't threaded, or they weren't last I checked.

But the comment on a status sticks to the status, not as a random flat message somewhere in a twitter-stream.

So as opposed to on twitter you do get some context and you know what they replied to. I say that is "threaded" enough to make it useful.

It has always seemed to me that Twitter had been extremely hyped up, but only by the very people Twitter is optimal for (e.g., journalists, bloggers, and anyone else who would benefit from spreading information in a 'one-to-many' way). Other (average and non-tech) people, whose 'followers' are limited to Facebook friends, generally don't understand Twitter, and are often actually quite annoyed that they have to keep hearing about it.

I think, therefore, it could be true that all these readers/commenters who seem to be 'rooting' for Twitter's downfall, may more accurately be rooting for it to stop being so overhyped, or for it to at least be presented as a product they can understand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle

Thank you, I didn't even know there was an established term for this.

Some of the metrics about how many users are active and produce a certain % of the content are somewhat irrelevant and are not a sign of downfall. In nearly every social network I've studied with the Web Ecology Project (http://webecologyproject.org) we've roughly seen that the top 10% of users create 90% of the content. This is true for everything from HN to Facebook.

It was a super easy story in 2009 to praise Twitter. It got people reading the articles and sold copies/advertisements. The news like stuff that is new. Now its time for them to step up to the plate and continue on with having an awesome, useful and sustainable service and company.

Is wishing I could stop hearing about it the same as rooting for its downfall? The only feelings of negativity I have towards it is related to the resurgence in url shorteners, which is a view outside the mainstream.

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