Twitter Is Doomed

I know you’re going to call me absolutely nuts. Twitter is booming. How can the fastest growing “thing” on the Internet be destined for failure? I say “thing” because Twitter isn’t really a business. You have to make money to be a business. You’re also thinking…why do you have a Twitter account if Twitter is doomed? Well, my use of Twitter is the perfect example of why it’s doomed. I’ll make this short, sweet and to the point.

Cause. Twitter was built to drive traffic and not profit. They are incredibly successful at driving traffic. Now they’ve got the traffic, but they’ve lost control of much of the potential for monetization and are stuck trying to figure out a strategy to make money.

Problem. By the time they figure out the right strategy the entire system will be overrun with self-promoters. Take a second to download TweetDeck and run a search on any feed. Count the number of posts where someone is promoting their business. See my statement above, “my use of Twitter is a perfect example of why it’s doomed.” The only reason I have a Twitter account is because I thought it would benefit my business. The 140 character concept just doesn’t allow for content of any substance and naturally breeds automated posts and marketing junk. Honestly, answer this question…do you use Twitter because you enjoy the platform, or because you heard it can benefit your business/career?

Don’t get me wrong, there are people out there making money off of Twitter. People selling consulting, me too software and other Twitter focused products. Side note: this is the one time you’ll ever hear me talk negatively about a system that is making other people money. I once read that if you want to make money, make something that makes other people money, and I absolutely love that saying. I believe it was in Inc. magazine. Well…this is the exception to that rule. Unfortunately for these few making money now, the good times will end because Twitter is increasingly becoming marketing clutter and noise. Eventually people will figure out that Twitter is just a bunch of businesses trying to push their selfish agenda, like me. This won’t happen overnight, but you’ll see another platform pop up and begin to steal users. Those Twitter icons will start to become friendulater icons (completely made up company…but a domain I own). See MySpace icons becoming facebook icons for a real world example.

Two possible results:

1. Twitter finds a buyer to overpay and watches the house of cards come crashing down from a palace on the beach (again, see Myspace)
2. The company will thumb its nose at already overpriced offers in hopes of a YouTube type offer. When the offer doesn’t come, Twitter’s high profile investors will start to lose faith, and the company will be eaten by the new hot “thing” available (see friendster).

Call me old fashioned, but I like businesses that figure out how they’re going to make money and construct the company to support that objective. Go big, create something earth shattering and change the world as we know it today. Just don’t procrastinate on how you’re going to make money to make this earth shattering idea sustainable. And please, don’t build another venue for us self-promoters to blow our own horn about how awesome we are. In the mean time, I’ll continue to use Twitter for my selfish benefit until the imminent doom hits. So please, be sure to follow us on Twitter.

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Tagged as: Twitter