Comments on: End of the Twitterless Week: Experiences and Reflections

By: Users leaving Twitter for FriendFeed? Not quite. « TechTicker

Users leaving Twitter for FriendFeed? Not quite. « TechTicker — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:21:06 +0000

[...] as early adopters do and are therefore far more tolerant of the outages. As I discovered during my Twitterless week, the implications of moving away from Twitter to something else are a virtually complete loss of [...]

By: ez

ez — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:05:47 +0000

To move a sub-community, I think you need to move the supernodes. They are the core and without them moving, the rest probably will not gain traction to go elsewhere.

By: Oli from the-iBlog

Oli from the-iBlog — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:15:40 +0000

I’m currently using Twitter a lot, and am finding myself looking into all kinds of social networking services. Plurk is a good one, but I’m sticking to Twitter thanks to its ease of use, and the many iPhone apps/webapps for it. Its up-time seems to have improved of late too.

By: Looking for a Twitter alternative? Good luck ! | The-iBlog

Looking for a Twitter alternative? Good luck ! | The-iBlog — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:12:53 +0000

[...] Twitter users take issue with its current ‘is it up, is it down’ state of affairs, and Mike Bogle is no exception. So much so, he’s spent a whole week Twitter-free, and tried out a couple of alternatives. [...]

By: Mike Bogle

Mike Bogle — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 21:46:21 +0000

@ez - You’re too right. I didn’t cover the social value of the community that uses social software with nearly enough depth or detail. I may try and roll that into a wider more comprehensive post I think, because it’s applicable to trends and usage across the internet in general really as opposed to just Twitter.

@Sarah - There seems to be regular discussion across Twitter of those - like me - who want to leave the application. However I think most ultimately come to the same conclusions as I - that one person leaving will only result in a loss of their own network.

I’ve even tried to motivate a small-scale revolt and exodus, but never to any success.

If an entire sub-community were to make the switch, it would enable their activities to continue more or less unabated. But surely one person couldn’t motivate that sort of systemic decision.

For now I think Twitter has a short-term reprieve, but if they don’t get their act together something will eventually happen that will break the dam and see the end of their position as king of the castle.

By: Sarah Stewart

Sarah Stewart — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 20:47:12 +0000

You’ve just summed up a conversation I was involved in - its not the tools but the community that uses them. I got in a panic the other day because there was ‘talk’ about leaving Twitter and I was afraid everyone would go and leave me behind

By: ez

ez — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 12:52:19 +0000

I agree, though, I think you could take the statement one step further. Besides just the number of users, what makes Twitter is the social value of the users. Specifically, the trust, respect, helpfulness I have found in the users who are there.

As those users leave Twitter, its value to me diminishes. The question is where will I replace them or find them again.