Thoughts on the future of Twitter

Three separate tweets arrived today. And I felt they could be combined to paint wildly different possible views of the future of Twitter.

First of all, came the thought that Twitter would be sold next year for up to 2 billion dollars (@Twitter_Tips Microsoft or Google Will Buy Twitter in 2010 http://j.mp/5nKRij). I find that a bit hard to agree with as without hard data on the usage and a real monetization plan, then what would they be buying. On the user count front almost every day you will see comments about the number of users on Twitter rising or falling, but there are no hard facts behind the discussions so everyone brings their own baggage and jumps onto their hobby horse. The variations of usage of web vs api vs whatever means that the numbers that are available need to have so many assumptions and caveats applied then you could argue anything with them, but the shift in demographics from older to younger users does seem to suggest a change in usage at the very least).

The second tweet suggested that Twitter is a giant pyramid scheme with risk of collapsing (@Twitter_Tips If We All Quit Listening & Only Broadcast, Is Twitter A Giant Ponzi scheme? http://j.mp/5maN4U) as users don't post and get fed up of the marketing being published at them. Again I don't totaly buy it, however as a relative newbie I have been shocked at how few people actually tweet and how their geographical distribution is uneven to say the least, so I don't think there is a firm foundation.

But surely Twitter couldn't have any real problems.
Look at how many users and traffic it has.
Which brings me to today's third tweet about the problems of the former darling of social networking MySpace (@bcs MySpace must 'regain its mojo': 23/11/2009 http://bit.ly/08B6cei).

so where does that leave us?

Twitter could have a bright future with funding from a giant, or it could disappear perhaps in the undercurrent from Google Wave. The concept of microblogging is great, however most of the tweets don't stick to the 140 characters, they refer you to a "proper" blog with the complete story. So if Twitter isn't for telling people what you are doing and is just for pointing you to other information, then what is its killer app reason to exist?

And at this point I have to say I don't read Hello and if the killer app is just to find out what the celebs had for breakfast then maybe its a club that I wouldn't want to be part of ;-)

But in the meantime I'm getting real value from the tool and pleasure from the wide range of tweets I see and have managed to miss most of the mass-marketing and DMs that other users complain about.