End of the Twitterless Week: Experiences and Reflections
It’s been one week - to the hour - since the start of my “Twitterless Week Experiment” and I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned that there are at least two powerful competitors in the microblogging realm - Jaiku and Pownce - either of which would be a very deserving recipient of Twitter’s teetering crown.
Both services are so solid in fact that I am hard pressed to decide between the two as to which is best. Each offers its own strengths and capabilities. Jaiku is very Twitter like, with the added bonus of threaded commenting and a groups tool. Pownce carries an incredible natively developed AIR application and phenomenal functionality offerings - including threaded commenting as well as the opportunity share massive files of up to 100 MB’s or 250 MB’s for paid accounts.
In terms of functionality and usability, both Jaiku and Pownce leave Twitter in the dust. However I’ve discovered that Twitter has something that neither of these two communities do, and which is singlehandedly responsible for powering its dominance over the market: users.
More than anything else, this last week has taught me that the value of Twitter has nothing to do with the service - there is a ridiculous amount to be desired there, and frankly Twitter should be ashamed of itself in that respect. No, the value of Twitter is in the user community that surrounds it.
The experiences I take from my evaluation of both Jaiku and Pownce were exactly the same. In both cases I spent the first two days exploring the tool suite and available functionality, feeling extremely satisfied and optimistic all the while. Then I would begin to seek out like-minded users only to discover there were not many to be found.
Let’s be clear about this though. There are definitely users to be found at both Jaiku and Pownce, however the magnitude of the overall population is orders less than Twitter, and the amount of usage seems equally smaller.
Basically I’ve found two fantastic alternatives to Twitter - both of which I would quite happily switch to - but very few users. It was like moving from an active, bustling metropolis plagued by dilapidated and decaying infrastructure and pathetic governance, and moving to a brand-new town with few residents.
It’s not the buildings that make the town, it’s the people. Likewise, without users a social network is neither social, nor a network - it’s just a web application left wanting for a voice.
So ultimately I will opt to remain with Twitter - for now. I have no loyalties for the application whatsoever; what I do have though is a tremendous desire to remain a part of my network. In the end the thought of losing my network on Twitter is far, far worse than the notion of having to deal with the unreliability of the framework that supports it.
June 14th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
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.
[Reply]
June 15th, 2008 at 6:47 am
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
[Reply]
June 16th, 2008 at 7:46 am
@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.
[Reply]
June 16th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
[...] 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. [...]
June 16th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
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.
[Reply]
June 18th, 2008 at 5:05 am
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.
[Reply]
June 28th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
[...] 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 [...]