Twitter Releases Second Album, Fans Disappointed

The title of this blog post is a little misleading.  Twitter is not a rock band, and hasn’t released any albums.  The idea for this post came about as I was reading Gerry McGovern’s Killer Web Content.  Gerry writes…

The similarities between the music and technology industries are striking.  Each one desperately needs a “next big thing.”  Each one desperately needs to whip up a frenzy about something that is definitely going to change the world – until the next big thing comes along.

Twitter is the current “next big thing”.  However, much like the rock band that explodes onto the scene with their debut album, the second album has many early fans disappointed and looking for something fresh and new to give their attention to.

The Technology Hype Cycle

The hype cycle, a term originally coined by Gartner, represents the five stages that any successful technology will typically pass through in its life.

The Gartner Hype Cycle. Source: Wikipedia

Most successful technology will experience a period of explosive growth which at its peak will usually result in vastly overinflated expectations.  What follows is a crash of negativity and disillusionment, out of which rises a mature and productive technology.

Twitter’s Early Days

As mainstream media races to report on such significant milestones as the first Twitter user to reach 1 million followers (Ashton Kutcher, in case you missed it) and the “Oprah moment” when the queen of US daytime television sent her first tweet to a waiting audience of tens of thousands of followers, it is easy to forget that just a year ago Twitter was relatively unknown in mainstream society.

Early adopters such as Leo Laporte and Kevin Rose were spreading the word amongst the tech community and battling it out for first place in follower counts when 100,000 followers seemed like a lot.  Their only celebrity competition was Barack Obama who famously used Twitter as part of a complex social media campaign as he ran for president.

These were fun times for early adopters.  Twitter was new and exciting, and hadn’t been discovered by regular people yet.  There was a sense of community, of connection, and the feeling that anyone could become somebody on Twitter with just a few thousand followers.  The top 100 Twitter users ranked by follower count was a who’s who of popular bloggers.

Twitter’s “Britney Moment”

Britney Spears may not have been the first big name celebrity to hit Twitter but she was the first that most people heard about.   Shaquille O’Neal arrived not long after and before long there was a frenzy of Twitter uptake by celebrities, brands, and news organisations.

Twitter became a media darling.  The mainstream media was covering Twitter on a daily basis.  Not only were they covering it, they were jumping on board and creating their own Twitter accounts.

When I was younger interaction with live news broadcasts was either through a phone poll, a vox pop, or someone breaking into the studio and streaking through set during the broadcast.  Now viewers can follow their favourite news sources on Twitter, receive tweets when news breaks, and tweet questions back at them to be read and answered live on air.

Twitter’s “Oprah Moment”

The biggest event by far to hit Twitter has been the day Oprah sent her first tweet in front of her live studio audience.  Not only has this event contributed to even greater explosive growth for Twitter, but has caused rumblings among early adopters that Twitter is being ruined by all of the people flocking to follow their favourite celebrities (Oprah wasn’t the first celebrity to start building a big following, but she seems to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back).  There is even a hashtag now for people to use when declaring they were here before Oprah.

To many early adopters Twitter has reached the peak of expectations and is diving rapidly into the trough of disillusionment.  And so begins the backlash.

Twitter Backlash, a Self-fulfilling Prophecy?

The Industry Standard’s Paul Boutin points out that the “Twitter backlash” has already started.  “Gee whiz” articles about Twitter are old hat, the way to draw readers now is to predict the demise of Twitter.  Media late to the party on the Twitter explosion want to be the first to call it dead.  Blogs on the Twitter backlash are starting up.  “Twitter sucks” is trending upwards as a search term on Google.

The Next Big Twitter

Some of the big names among Twitter’s early adopters are already looking for an alternative.  The problem is, there aren’t any new ones emerging, and the current competition such as FriendFeed, Facebook, and MySpace lack the excitment of a shiny new toy.  The “next big thing” has to arrive, but Twitter has a lot of advantages still.

Firstly there is the simplicity of Twitter.  Signing up and getting started is far simpler on Twitter than any other social networking service out there now, and you can show up and read the stream of tweets from people you follow, respond to your replies and DM’s, and then duck away again.

Then there is the eco-system that has grown around it.  Twitter.com itself is fairly unremarkable, but the third party applications and services that have been built do more to sustain it than any features that Twitter themselves could add.

How do you beat something so simple without just being a clone?

More Fun to Build Something New

I think it is natural for early adopters to get itchy feet and start to think about moving on.  It is more fun to tell people about the new band you’ve discovered and to help build a fanbase than it is to discover your parents listening to them on the radio and singing along.  Once the band hits it big they don’t need you any more.

But Twitter is not a rock band.  Twitter is a social networking service.  Twitter is a way to connect and communicate with people that you may never meet in person, but share things in common with.  Twitter is a place where you can build a list of followers who trust you and see you as offering value, which you can then use to promote yourself and the things that you produce.

Leaving Twitter for the next big thing, just to get that rush of excitement again, means walking away from all that you have already built.