Pownce

Is Twitter Vulnerable to Competition?

By Mark Evans in Social Media No Comments Tags: , , ,

Now that Twitter has decided to go to war against its developers, an interesting question is whether this could open the door for a competitor to establish a foothold? At the moment, there is no competition. Twitter rules the roost with 200 million users and enough venture capital to sink a ship.

But as Twitter looks to put the hammer down on its ecosystem, it does make you wonder if it will provide a window someone to wedge itself into the micro-blogging landscape? It hasn’t been for a lack of trying with startups such as Plurk, Pownce, Identi.ca and Jaiku taking a shot at becoming a viable alternative. So far, nothing’s stuck.

Meanwhile, the most interesting micro-blogging startups have shied away from going to head-to-head with Twitter by focusing on the enterprise market, led by Yammer, which is used by more than 100,000 companies worldwide.

So what would it take to knock off Twitter?

What would a new service need to have to convince enough people to jump ship? Would it be new, more or well-integrated features? Pownce, for example, was arguably a more feature-rich service than Twitter but that wasn’t nearly enough to make it a viable competitor or threat to Twitter.

Given how Twitter remains a no-frills service, there may be an opportunity for someone to capitalize by creating a service that includes a multi-column client, a built-in way to share documents and photos, an effective way to build a network, security and a mobile application.

Maybe the new player need to play nice with developers and have a viable business model that helps it become a business while providing value to consumers.

Of course, Twitter is a huge entity to knock off – a Goliath that has yet to run into a David. But this doesn’t mean it’s not vulnerable to a better mousetrap. Friendster once dominated the social networking marketplace, and MySpace was much bigger than Facebook.

Granted, knocking off or just taking on Twitter would be a mammoth undertaking but no one is impenetrable. And if you are a glass half full kind of person, Twitter’s battle with its developers and struggles to come up with a viable business model could be weaknesses that could be exploited.

Twitter’s Business Model: Japanese Style

By Mark Evans in Web 2.0 2 Comments Tags: , ,

A couple comments on the launch of a Japanese version of Twitter – complete with advertisements.

1. This is clearly the future of Twitter. Anyone who takes a look at Twitter Japan’s interface has everything they need to know on what Twitter’s non-Japanese future will be, or, at least, should be.

Twitter has reached the point from a critical mass perspective where it’s time to finally turn its strategic sights from getting big to getting business. Twitter is the king of the 140-character messaging space, which gives it the power to make the rules. Look at last weekend’s technical troubles. Instead of Twitter getting pounded, bloggers were literally crying because they couldn’t Twitter. That’s clout!

Twitter can now use its stature to implement a business model(s) with little or no fear that a lot of users are going to flee to rivals such as Pownce and Jaiku. Twitter can roll new versions of the service with advertising a la Twitter Japan, or premium versions without advertising. It can also strike deals with API users to do revenue-sharing.

2. Unless something dramatic happens, Pownce’s prospects of challenging Twitter have evaporated. If Twitter can start to generate revenue instead of just being terribly popular, the 140-character messaging game will be over with Pownce, et al left in the dust.

Truth be told, it would be a shame because Pownce has a lot going for it. But as someone mentioned to me earlier this week, users go where the users are – which is why Twitter has so much traction. Mike Arrington probably summed up in a post yesterday about Twitter’s elite status.

There are many competitors out there, and some of them are better than Twitter. But since everyone is already using Twitter, and the rate of growth is increasing, going to those competitors makes no sense.

As Twitter’s business starts to unfold, it will be interesting to see how it stickhandles the introduction of advertising into the service. No doubt, some people will be upset/disappointed but most of these people will squawk for awhile before pounding out some more 140-character messages.

Update: Privacy has reared its head in the Twitter-Sphere amid reports that someone’s direct messages appeared within the public Twitter stream. It’s just another example about how people forget that private stuff on the Web isn’t guarantee to stay private. If you really want to have a private conversation, use some old technology called a telephone.

New Features Twitter Needs to Compete

By Mark Evans in Web 2.0 10 Comments Tags: , ,

Is Twitter getting alarmingly stale?

For all the excitement about its effectiveness as a streamlined communications tool, Twitter is showing troubling signs of falling behind in the arm’s race given what FriendFeed is doing (social aggregation and, now, search) and what much-neglected Pownce has within its arsenal.

Twitter, meanwhile, continues to struggle with infrastructure issues while providing little or no indication that its feature set will be expanded any time soon. As a Twitter fan, here’s some things I’d like to see Twitter do:

1. Improved people search, including a recommendation engine (a la Friendfeed) of who I might be interested in following.

2. Tagging

3. The ability to send files using P2P (copy the Pownce model by providing a free service for files under a certain size, and charge a premium for larger files)

4. Email notifications alerting you about activity by a particular user or about a specific topic.

5. Easier ways to send private messages. Unless you know something Twitter ID, using the drop-down menu to go through your followers is far from user-friendly.

6. The ability to have private or semi-private group conversations.

7. A business model (advertising, premium services, etc.) so Twitter can find way(s) to make money so it can hire developers to launch more features, and harden its infrastructure.

8. A native desktop application to compete/complement products such as Thwirl. Nothing like a little competition to boost the eco-system.

9. More support for third-party developers to create plugins to expand Twitter’s functionality.

10. Buy Pownce to jump-start its feature roadmap.

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