What Went Wrong at Twitter?
By Timothy Tibbetts |
I like Twitter. Just that statement alone can split a room with people who love it or hate it. I started using it mostly because of MajorGeeks and grew to like it. It's a great way to quickly get all of your news and interests in one place.
Twitter has recently announced they are shutting down their video streaming service Vine and laying off 9% of their workers (about 350 jobs) as revenues slow with a $100 million loss this past quarter.
We get it. Everyone want's something for free. It's hard to advertise or acquire advertisers if no one intends to spend a dime. It's a simple as that. People need to understand that a monster like Twitter costs a fortune to run. Even a small website like MajorGeeks can cost thousands a month just to see what you see here. Back when the internet started, many servers were at educational sites and had very few users and used very little bandwidth. Those days are over. Your favorite websites need your support. If you can take the time to "Like" Shakira (almost 105 million have), then you should take the time to support your favorite website.
So, what went wrong? If you ask me everything that Twitter thought was a great idea is everything that's wrong with it; the 140 character limit. Now you can argue that the 140 character limits, called tweets, is what Twitter is about. In that case, I'd argue that Facebook was a social media platform for college students. Or that McDonalds was a barbecue restaurant.
Either way, the biggest problem with the 140 character limit is the hit and run effect. Since you only get 140 characters, you can only get so much actual, useful information. For comparison, that sentence you just read was 175 characters. The entire article, so far, is 1702 characters. Twitter works great if you're a brand or you have an agenda. That eliminates most of us.
Also, how come I can only upload 1 picture? Twitter is aware of the popularity of photos, right? They're hanging in there popularity wise at number 8, just above Amazon. So, it's not about traffic; that's pretty impressive considering the number of social media competitors.
That brings me to my final answer. I don't run an ad blocker, and Twitter has to be one of the lightest ad sites out there. There's alway's a promoted hashtag and an occasional sponsored Tweet, but that's about all I see. I've certainly never clicked an ad and never seen a promoted Tweet I cared about. "Who to follow" would be a great place to allow people to buy an ad that suggests you follow them. That's one. It's out of the way and not at all annoying in my opinion. Why not sell ad space that's about the same size of a tweet that can be slipped in with the tweets you see with the word sponsored or advertisement. Hey, I just did it to you above this paragraph :)
Hey, I'm just writing and running a small website with my business partner, so maybe I don't have the brains to tell multi-million dollar businesses how to get out of the hole, but I'd sure like to hear what you think in the comments below.
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Twitter has recently announced they are shutting down their video streaming service Vine and laying off 9% of their workers (about 350 jobs) as revenues slow with a $100 million loss this past quarter.
We get it. Everyone want's something for free. It's hard to advertise or acquire advertisers if no one intends to spend a dime. It's a simple as that. People need to understand that a monster like Twitter costs a fortune to run. Even a small website like MajorGeeks can cost thousands a month just to see what you see here. Back when the internet started, many servers were at educational sites and had very few users and used very little bandwidth. Those days are over. Your favorite websites need your support. If you can take the time to "Like" Shakira (almost 105 million have), then you should take the time to support your favorite website.
So, what went wrong? If you ask me everything that Twitter thought was a great idea is everything that's wrong with it; the 140 character limit. Now you can argue that the 140 character limits, called tweets, is what Twitter is about. In that case, I'd argue that Facebook was a social media platform for college students. Or that McDonalds was a barbecue restaurant.
Either way, the biggest problem with the 140 character limit is the hit and run effect. Since you only get 140 characters, you can only get so much actual, useful information. For comparison, that sentence you just read was 175 characters. The entire article, so far, is 1702 characters. Twitter works great if you're a brand or you have an agenda. That eliminates most of us.
Also, how come I can only upload 1 picture? Twitter is aware of the popularity of photos, right? They're hanging in there popularity wise at number 8, just above Amazon. So, it's not about traffic; that's pretty impressive considering the number of social media competitors.
That brings me to my final answer. I don't run an ad blocker, and Twitter has to be one of the lightest ad sites out there. There's alway's a promoted hashtag and an occasional sponsored Tweet, but that's about all I see. I've certainly never clicked an ad and never seen a promoted Tweet I cared about. "Who to follow" would be a great place to allow people to buy an ad that suggests you follow them. That's one. It's out of the way and not at all annoying in my opinion. Why not sell ad space that's about the same size of a tweet that can be slipped in with the tweets you see with the word sponsored or advertisement. Hey, I just did it to you above this paragraph :)
Hey, I'm just writing and running a small website with my business partner, so maybe I don't have the brains to tell multi-million dollar businesses how to get out of the hole, but I'd sure like to hear what you think in the comments below.
comments powered by Disqus
