On Twitter’s Flat-lined Growth

January 12th, 2010 by Andrew Swenson in Biz, Marketing, social media

Twitter’s recent flatline has some Twitter-crazed marketers scrambling. After all, you spent all that time drafting and creating a Twitter strategy, and now we’re already looking for “next year’s Twitter” (which, incidentally, Pete Cashmore says is Foursquare).

This news neither alarms nor frightens me. We all knew this day was coming. Science tells us that exponential growth is unsustainable in cases of population and resource use, so should Twitter really be an exception?

I know it’s unthinkable, but some day we’ll most likely be having the same conversation about a Facebook flat-line.

The possibility that our world’s most popular social networks might dry up a la MySpace is certainly real, but it doesn’t need to be scary. If history continues to repeat, a new network will rush in to fill the void.

This, of course, supports our the oft-heralded maxim that communities are far more important than the platforms they use to communicate. The real-time web is about constant change, and that means how people adopt, use, and abandon platforms as well.

So relax, don’t panic, and realize that connection is inevitable, even if we change how we do it.

-Andrew

Image Credit: Jim Linwood (brighton on Fickr); original here

Tags: panic, sustainable growth, Twitter

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Scott Hale

I don't think you are wrong about a new medium coming to fill the Twitter void eventually, but I think that eventually is a bit further in the future than some imagine. During Twitter's major boom, there were a bunch of other sites that offered the exact same thing. In fact, they did it better. But Twitter won out because that's where all the people were. Scoble tried to help FriendFeed become the new Twitter because it had more upside...but it never got the people.

For Twitter to go away, there has to be a massive shift of a person's network to some other platform (and that has to happen to a lot of networks). The important part about that statement is that people will go where the network (or community) goes. So focus on the network/community/communication and you have nothing to worry about.

I'll jump on that "Foursquare is Dumb" train...for now. Once marketers start integrating, it will be useful for everybody and as you said, Andrew, we'll all wonder how we lived without out it :)
Andrew Swenson

Scott,

Thanks for commenting here. You bring up some excellent points, especially that "For Twitter to go away, there has to be a massive shift of a person's network to some other platform (and that has to happen to a lot of networks)."

But what's interesting to me is that communities like Facebook and Twitter are centralized, private, and thus captive to private interests.

But what if we made an NEA (nobody owns it, everyone can use it, anyone can improve it) protocol like RSS to handle a Twitter/Tumblr like feed. (Doc Searls talks about this NEA protocol in his post "Beyond Social Media" - http://bit.ly/927IeN )

This would move the community out of the clutches of a private service like Twitter, decentralizing the network itself and ultimately providing a wide open resource for building and engaging community.

Okay, so it's tough to explain succinctly. Read Doc Searl's post and you'll get what I mean.

Thanks again,
Andrew
abbyannette

I like this post a lot. Perhaps it would have been better for all of us to sign up for a communication platform with slow and steady growth? Also, I think Foursquare is lame. But then again, isn't that what everyone thought about Twitter?
Andrew Swenson

Thanks Abby.

Is there such a thing as a communication platform with slow and steady growth?

I also think Foursquare is lame.

However, I'm predicting that in November, we'll both look back and say, "how did we live without Foursquare?!"

Sorry for the vision of apocalypse.

On Twitter’s Flat-lined Growth

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