MicroBlogging Is About to Go All McDonalds On Us and I’m Tired Of It.

10 | Posted In Social Media by David

It seems like every week sees another launch or yet another new social media website. And right now, microblogging seems to be the fad. Twitter created the fad by being the standard bearer. Everybody jumped on board. The early adopters all wanted to have little baby whales with the Twitter.

Then, Twitter started to crack up. The fail whale became a common occurrence. Frustration grows to the point where people wonder if Twitter is going to die off.

Enterprising geeks everywhere saw the opportunity. Up sprouts Plurk. Then Identi.ca. Kwippy. Identica was the “oh lord” moment for me, especially when I saw at the bottom of their site that they are powered by Laconica.

Anybody can now download and install this thing and essentially create their own Identica. Oh lord, the days of all the early adopters flocking from one site to the next is about to end because we’re all going to get bored with it!

We’re going to see a boatload of these things sprout up. Like a McDonalds on every corner. Or a Starbucks.

Remember BBS?

Remember the BBS? This is pre-Internet as we know it. Independent people could start up a little mini network and run a little BBS from their home. You dial into a phone number and connect to the people on that BBS.

Well, I smell this concept potentially coming back in the form of open-source microblogging.

Maybe we’ll see niche Twitter-clones? Geographically centric microblog networks?

The difference would be, of course, that being based on an open standard means you could have a federated identity across all of these networks. At least potentially.

Clones Make Me Bored

All the “me too” people are getting involved in the Twitter/FriendFeed game now. There are just too many of the damn things out there to be interesting anymore. I, as a tech blogger, find I’m getting tired of it.

How many minutely different approaches can we put up with for the same concept?

So, I’ll hereby declare it: Twitter and FriendFeed are the standards. Nothing will kill them. Get over it. No more Twitter killers, please. You’re not going to kill Twitter anymore than a mom-and-pop shop is going to kill Wal-Mart. The only company that can kill Twitter is Twitter.

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  • http://fenceadvice.com/ Keith Bloemendaal

    I’ll admit I jumped on the Identi.ca wagon at first, the timing was good because of all the problems Twitter was having. Now, I pretty much stick to Twitter, FF, and Plurk. I really like the way Plurk creates an easier way to follow conversations, therefore encouraging more conversation across the board.
    Keith

  • http://fenceadvice.com/ Keith Bloemendaal

    I’ll admit I jumped on the Identi.ca wagon at first, the timing was good because of all the problems Twitter was having. Now, I pretty much stick to Twitter, FF, and Plurk. I really like the way Plurk creates an easier way to follow conversations, therefore encouraging more conversation across the board.
    Keith

  • http://macomma.blogspot.com Lee

    I don’t think anyone will argue with you, David, about not needing ANOTHER social network. Not many of us have patience for multiple places to do the same things.

    I would argue though, that usage is killing Twitter. That’s why the vultures are coming in. Twitter was never intended to be used the way its being used today. Originally, the tagline, “What are you doing?” was meant to be like an IM “away message.” You could broadcast a message to 900 of your closest friends.

    The developers at Twitter didn’t anticipate that all 900 would be @replying to you. The evolution and the impact on the servers came as a surprise to those at Twitter. Also, even IF the Twitter servers are tweaked (no pun intended) to handle the load, I still believe the next best thing will still kill Twitter. For awhile people will stick around. Just like there are still people who have TVs with rotary dials.

    Today, people have a low tolerance for sameness. Everyone gets bored easily and needs that next fix more quickly than the last. Look at cell phones today. Who keeps their cellphones beyond 2 years? (And its not because they are breaking.)

    Here’s why Twitter is not safe:
    Twitter evolved into a conversation tool, but the end user has a hard time tracking conversations and has to rely on a 3rd party app to do so. Plurk allows users to follow conversation much more easily. Users can even link to entire conversations on a single page. Here’s an example:
    http://www.plurk.com/p/14zxr

    Interfaces are slightly different, but people will learn. Problem with jumping from Twitter is that people don’t want to leave their networks behind.

    Plurk allows you to import your friends from Twitter and identi.ca is coming forth with a Twitter integration feature, as well.

    My point being that these apps are just small blips on the road to social networking progress.

    We may have to agree to disagree here. I do love Twitter and I’m loving Plurk too.

    There’s room on the playground (right now) for a few to play nicely, but pretty soon there will be a shiny new toy coming along and Twitter (and Plurk and all these other Twitter-wanna-be’s) will be buried under the sand.

    Don’t get too attached.

    ~Lee
    @teachakidd on Twitter and Plurk

  • http://macomma.blogspot.com Lee

    I don’t think anyone will argue with you, David, about not needing ANOTHER social network. Not many of us have patience for multiple places to do the same things.

    I would argue though, that usage is killing Twitter. That’s why the vultures are coming in. Twitter was never intended to be used the way its being used today. Originally, the tagline, “What are you doing?” was meant to be like an IM “away message.” You could broadcast a message to 900 of your closest friends.

    The developers at Twitter didn’t anticipate that all 900 would be @replying to you. The evolution and the impact on the servers came as a surprise to those at Twitter. Also, even IF the Twitter servers are tweaked (no pun intended) to handle the load, I still believe the next best thing will still kill Twitter. For awhile people will stick around. Just like there are still people who have TVs with rotary dials.

    Today, people have a low tolerance for sameness. Everyone gets bored easily and needs that next fix more quickly than the last. Look at cell phones today. Who keeps their cellphones beyond 2 years? (And its not because they are breaking.)

    Here’s why Twitter is not safe:
    Twitter evolved into a conversation tool, but the end user has a hard time tracking conversations and has to rely on a 3rd party app to do so. Plurk allows users to follow conversation much more easily. Users can even link to entire conversations on a single page. Here’s an example:
    http://www.plurk.com/p/14zxr

    Interfaces are slightly different, but people will learn. Problem with jumping from Twitter is that people don’t want to leave their networks behind.

    Plurk allows you to import your friends from Twitter and identi.ca is coming forth with a Twitter integration feature, as well.

    My point being that these apps are just small blips on the road to social networking progress.

    We may have to agree to disagree here. I do love Twitter and I’m loving Plurk too.

    There’s room on the playground (right now) for a few to play nicely, but pretty soon there will be a shiny new toy coming along and Twitter (and Plurk and all these other Twitter-wanna-be’s) will be buried under the sand.

    Don’t get too attached.

    ~Lee
    @teachakidd on Twitter and Plurk

  • John C

    Is this a “winner takes all” kind of space? Where there are a few big popular micro-blogging sites and a long tail of niche apps/sites. Kind of feels that way to me as I can only feed a few (one or two) of these at any one time. It may well be fine for the A-list (micro)-bloggers who attract a crowd no matter where they go (Laporte, Calacanis, Scoble, etc) . But if you are an unknown you need to work hard at building up a respect (and a following) through intelligent posts by contributing to the conversation. To have to do that all over again on a new site is quite unappealing to me.
    Cheers
    John

  • John C

    Is this a “winner takes all” kind of space? Where there are a few big popular micro-blogging sites and a long tail of niche apps/sites. Kind of feels that way to me as I can only feed a few (one or two) of these at any one time. It may well be fine for the A-list (micro)-bloggers who attract a crowd no matter where they go (Laporte, Calacanis, Scoble, etc) . But if you are an unknown you need to work hard at building up a respect (and a following) through intelligent posts by contributing to the conversation. To have to do that all over again on a new site is quite unappealing to me.
    Cheers
    John

  • http://dooyt.com Marcin Grodzicki

    On one hand you are right. Digg may have some competitors, but basically it owns the market (or at least it did untill YBuzz was introduced). It may be similiar with Twitter and Friendfeed (even though some people claim those are competitive products). But in ‘raw’ social networks like Myspace, Facebook, Bebo and others you have many companies. So it is not so obvious that being a ‘me too’ has to be a failure. One case can be local versions of services, that really kick off (Polish nasza-klasa.pl being one example). Other case is Iphone – after all it was ‘just another smartphone’ on the market. So mee too’s can be a success. But not many will be.

  • http://dooyt.com Marcin Grodzicki

    On one hand you are right. Digg may have some competitors, but basically it owns the market (or at least it did untill YBuzz was introduced). It may be similiar with Twitter and Friendfeed (even though some people claim those are competitive products). But in ‘raw’ social networks like Myspace, Facebook, Bebo and others you have many companies. So it is not so obvious that being a ‘me too’ has to be a failure. One case can be local versions of services, that really kick off (Polish nasza-klasa.pl being one example). Other case is Iphone – after all it was ‘just another smartphone’ on the market. So mee too’s can be a success. But not many will be.

  • Bobby

    David, the proliferation of all the social sites also makes it difficult for those of us trying to use them productively. I manage a team of remote field support engineers and social sites would be a great way to overcome the challenge of not working next to each other in a cubicle farm. But I’m reluctant to push this to the team because of the numbers of sites out there.

  • Bobby

    David, the proliferation of all the social sites also makes it difficult for those of us trying to use them productively. I manage a team of remote field support engineers and social sites would be a great way to overcome the challenge of not working next to each other in a cubicle farm. But I’m reluctant to push this to the team because of the numbers of sites out there.