As difficult as it might be to believe, it was not that long ago that MySpace dominated the social networking market, and made Facebook look like a pipsqueak. MySpace ruled the roost in such a major way that Rupert Murdoch spent nearly $600-million to make it part of his News Corp. empire. Now, MySpace is evaporating before our eyes while Facebook is battling Google for digital dominance.
…which brings us to Twitter, which dominates the micro-blogging world after vanquishing wannabes such as Jaiku and Pownce. Right now, there is no competition to Twitter – not even a weak and feeble MySpace. Instead, Twitter dominates while micro-blogging startups such as Yammer happily operate in the enterprise market.
Even so, there is growing speculation Twitter is about to face new and serious competition. The biggest threat appears to be Bill Gross’ UberMedia, which already has a strong foothold with a portfolio of Twitter applications.
According to CNN, Gross is considering a new, user-friendly service. The service would differentiate itself based on ease-of-use, and allow users to post messages longer than 140 characters.
As well, a group of developers disgruntled about how Twitter changed its API rules have launched rstatus.us, which is billing itself on two concepts: simplicity and openness.
Meanwhile, Twitter continues to search for a business model and ways to better connect and serve its users – something highlighted by GigaOm recently. When there was no threat of competition, Twitter could afford to struggle, knowing that even if it made mistakes, there was no one to capitalize on them.
But now, the landscape seems to be changing. As a result, Twitter no longer seems as impenetrable. While there’s still not a major rival on the horizon, something seems to be different.
The question is whether a new service could challenge Twitter, let alone do what Facebook did to MySpace. Does Twitter have such a dominant hold on the marketplace that it would be very difficult for a new player to make a serious charge?
My take is “no”.
As much as people love Twitter, social media users are fickle, disloyal at the drop of a hat and always looking for the next new and shiny object. If something better, different and more interesting than Twitter came along, it wouldn’t take much for it to attract a lot of attention.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect the masses to abandon Twitter but if Bill Gross can come up with a new and compelling service, anything could happen. It would be a challenge because the barriers to entry are extremely high. One false move, and you’ve got a Color.com, RockMelt or Flock on your hands.
But if you could hit one out of the park right away, watch out. In theory, all you’d need are breathless reviews from a Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble, Mike Arrington and Walter Mossberg for a service to go from zero to 60 miles an hour. Once the cool kids deem something to be wonderful, the masses could jump on board hard and fast.
If I were Twitter and its investors, I’d be nervous. The world is good now but there are competitive rumblings. They may not be loud but they exist – something we haven’t heard in a while.
More: For some other coverage about Twitter, check out this TechCrunch story looking at the-sky-is-falling story that appeared in Fortune Magazine.
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I wouldn’t want to switch unless it’s easy to remake all the connections, and on an ongoing basis as they adopted the new service. And how does that happen without Twitter’s cooperation?
Good point. One of the problems is that once everyone at a big “party”, it can be difficult for them to leave even if another party has better music, drinks, etc. Thanks for the comment. Mark
I wouldn’t either, but somehow I switched from Friendster to Myspace.. to Facebook. Now I feel enough “social networking fatigue” to really not want to switch, but if everyone else switched I certainly hold no loyalties.
Great article, Mark.
I’ve been reading the comments about UberMedia and Bill Gross and the rumors that they’re thinking about offering a ‘better’ Twitter. As a Twitter product creator, I would welcome alternatives to work with and new customers to help. But it is hard to crack something as big as Twitter, and it would be difficult for people to move. New features, like more than 140 chars, are not likely to be enough. In fact, we thought of a seamless way to create Tweets from our TweetRoost product of more than 140 chars, but before implementing, we asked our Twitter user experts what they thought of the idea. No one liked it. They all wanted to have to think within the 140 char box, and thought it was not a good idea. I believe they’re right. Uber needs to have something much more compelling.
Mark
I agree with Rich: I wouldn’t want to switch if I couldn’t port my social graph over. Porting content would be an extra bonus
Unlike MySpace, a lot of people built whole consultancies around Twitter and moving over isn’t as consequence-free. (Well, if you build a consultancy around one tool, without consideration to underlying methodology or other tools, I can’t feel too bad for you — but that’s a different story altogether). Also because of the Twitter open model, our networks are bigger than ever before, so there’s one less impetus to move.
Social Media Alert – Twitter | SMLRT
[...] ago that MySpace dominated the social networking market, and made Facebook look like a pipsqueak. read more Mark Evans Tech read [...]
Interesting post, Mark.
For some time, I have wondered just how impressive Twitter’s figures figures would be, if the millions of automated accounts were discounted from the figures.
I believe that the media’s adoption of Twitter will probably see it retain a decent sized userbase for the short and medium future. If a serious competitor were to step up, with an attractive proposition, it could certainly hurt Twitter. Would it kill Twitter off? Time will tell.
Jim,
You’re probably right that the media comes on board late, and they’ll likely be the last ones to leave Twitter if/when that time comes. cheers, Mark
Twitter has missed so many opportunities due to lack of focus that anyone with a *vision* of what Twitter *should be* could grind it into the dirt with a service that does what Twitter has been ignoring.
There’s no doubt Twitter has left open a window of opportunity whereas Facebook has done many of the right moves to close the door to competition. Thanks for the comment.
Mark
can’t believe twitter would go myspace, don’t want it to banish like myspace, but (supporting my point) then myspace had mostly teens, they graduated and grown up, matured to be youth then into their 30s left myspace accounts, thats what hit myspace but twitter isn’t teen dependent it has people from all segments and in a survey people from their 30s-40s
Is Twitter gaining or losing? - Abiro
[...] also lacks a lot of features that would be needed if it was stand-alone.This accentuates my point: Could Twitter Get “MySpaced”- – Mark Evans TechThere’s a lot of interesting stuff you can do on top of Twitter, as it essentially is an opt-in [...]
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[...] Could Twitter Get “MySpaced”? | Mark Evans Tech Twitter rules the roost of micro bloggers, but could it go the way of MySpace? There is speculation that Bill Gross’ UberMedia are working on an alternative. (tags: twitter MySpace RupertMurdoch Facebook Jaiku Pownce microblog UberMedia BillGross CNN API rstatus.net Color.com RockMelt Flock GuyKawasaki RobertScoble MikeArrington WalterMossberg GigaOm TechCrunch FortuneMagazine socialmedia MarkEvansTech MarkEvans) [...]