Digital Marketing and Technological Insight

Is there a day that goes by where some new micro-blogging “Twitter Killer” isn’t launched? Jaiku, Pownce, Plurk, FriendFeed…the list goes on and on. Each comes out the gate promising to be the next big thing and outside of a few earlier adopters they usually fizzle into social media purgatory - some good user numbers but nothing to get that excited over.

The latest entry into the micro-blogging field is Identi.ca and the buzz around them is of course very loud. So what is the big deal? Well, first they copy the Twitter minimalist approach in terms of user-experience. They avoid cluttering the site with other features / content and stay away from displaying content in a new way (e.g. Plurk) - Identi.ca sticks to the basics. However, the key differentiation is that while other micro-blogging services are looking to capitalize on Twitters technical issues (Fail Whale anyone?) Identi.ca actually tries to solve it. Identi.ca has made its code open-sourced and encourages users to host Identi.ca on their own servers - this approach would distribute the load if the service became extremely popular and theoretically avoid the downtime that plagues Twitter.

So why wont Identi.ca, or any other micro-blogging service, take down Twitter? The answer is simple, long-term user adoption. There is a difference between just signing up & updating a few times and actually contributing on a regular basis. For micro-blogging the power is in the conversation and right now Twitter wins hands-down. During Twitters technical issues, where it seemed like it was down more than it was up, many people tried out other services, however the majority of users have always come back to Twitter in some capacity. It is true that some other services, like FriendFeed, have better features but if you look at the traffic (see graph below) Twitter has too big of a head start in terms of users and conversations. Any other micro-blogging service who launches is automacially put behing the 8-ball and must play serious catch-up and face, in my opinion, insurmountable odds.

Right now, FriendFeed is probably the biggest Twitter competitor in terms of functionality and industry buzz.  All of the big social media players are users and some (like Jason Calacanis) have become fans and have threatened to start migrating all of their conversations to FriendFeed and away from Twitter. However, the success of a micro-blogging service has to do more than just having Calacanis, Arrington, Scoble, Israel, etc, use it - I already read their blogs and subsribe to their feeds so really how is that providing new content discovery? It isnt.

On top of users and conversations, Twitter also has two other areas where they are killing the competition: their API and mobile strategy. Just about every Web 2.0 service offers their API’s - Twitter is no different. However, because of the volume of traffic Twitter generates, numerous third-party developers have built applications that truly enhance the Twitter experience - Summize, Twellow, TwitterVision, Twirl, the list goes on and on. Granted every other micro-blogging service can replicate each of these applications, but again it comes down to users and Twitter just blows everyone else away.  In regards to mobile, Twitter has gotten this right from day one. Micro-blogging is about sending quick updates and the ability to do that from your mobile phone via text message or applications (e.g. TwitterBerry) adds another layer of ease to the conversation.

At the end of the day micro-blogging comes down to two things - users and conversations, and you cant have one without the other. Twitter has both. Twitter does need to overcome its technical hurdles and there are definite improvements to be made to the user-interface but in the end Twitter is the only micro-blogging service that doesnt have to be perfect to succeed.

• The Future, Growth and Monetization of Twitter
• Micro-Blogging Service Twitter Gets More Financing
• Twitter: Damned if you do, Damned if you don’t
• Twitter Finally Buys Summize Search Engine
• Twitter Updates for 2008-06-06