Twitter has run the entire tech-stock-bubble cycle in just a couple of years. The only difference is no one noticed.
I always thought they were different, that they had a place on the web that not even Facebook would dislodge but a few things of late suggest different.
I thought Ubertwitter and Twitroyd users losing their account access a couple of days ago must have been a mistake and that soon enough they would be switched back on. After all these two applications are responsible for bringing a chunk of members to Twitter and any more activity like this would be disingenuous, bordering arrogant.
Then I had a couple of “suspension notices” of my own. I personally have little time for twitter other than the occasional search, but I have customers who have followed the revolution and supported them by investing in Twitter applications. They suspended my test accounts for these services, or rather the link to the API. One of them an innovative search tool that evaluates Google and Twitter searches and compares the effectiveness of them both. It makes Twitter look so much better than Google for breaking news. Why would Twitter want to suspend a service like that? Its not like they are in competition or support spamming!
So what is the thinking behind these suspensions? It’s like Twitter are attempting to hamstring themselves, perhaps they have fallen out with their investors? Are they just sore that everyone else has figured a way to make money out of them yet they remain completely divorce from an effective business model themselves?
I haven’t seen you on Twitter lately!
No one has ever said that to me, and I’m not surprised as I rarely visit my own account anymore. I haven’t seen you on Facebook for a while is a much more likely request, except even as a practically non-facebook-user I am usually on it five or six times a week.
Recently I was impressed by a marketing campaign which included Twitter. I noticed none of the Twitter activity was performed by a human. Instead the campaign was generated through planned blog, facebook and Youtube posting. Each one of these would share information to Twitter and the consumer of the information was likely to pick it up in Facebook Youtube and other outlets without the need to visit Twitter.
There is no need for anyone to visit Twitter anymore other than to setup a profile.
Obviously this is bad news for Twitter, rather than being known as a branded engine they are becoming more like an unbranded and unseen ‘nut’ that will only ever receive attention when something goes wrong.
Their recent strategy is to reject those people who have helped and supported them in the past. Now they are big enough to go it alone. Reminds me of a few other social websites, MySpace, Friends Reunited, and ummm, what was that site?
They are too big for investors to drop and too small for many of us to care if they do.
References
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One of my facebook contacts, Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (which appears to be winning every award imagineable) unsurprisingly hit facebook’s maximum friend limit. To continue she must move to a fan page where there is no limit, but this means losing the comments, photos and videos and they cannot be copied across.
Initially facebook told Rebecca she could not download these items, but there is a way through the Accounts link:-
Account -> Account Settings -> Download your information
The file contains everything you uploaded to your account (so could be quite big). They organise the contents in folders and link them all up with ready to use web pages.
While this cannot be uploaded to facebook it can be uploaded to any other webspace and visible to the entire Internet community. You should remove your email address and the messages for security reasons (more on this below).
This will allow you to share the information created on your account with your new fans. They will be able to link to it or discuss it in almost the same way as if on a normal facebook page.
It is not the perfect solution but it is all we have right now. In time facebook may create a tool to handle this so I don’t think there is commercial viability for an independent software company to create one, besides facebook is in a state of constant change so the effort would be wasted.
What would it look like?
Here’s mine: http://www.martynwalker.com/fb/html/profile.html
You will see I removed the Messages section and my email and phone numbers. If you do not know how this is done you have a few choices. In terms of web page development this is easy and requires no particular skills. If you have an 8 year old son or daughter they will probably know what you need to do.
If you have a web friendly friend who charges $100/hour this should cost a nickel.
Alternatively Google/Youtube “HTML Tutorial” and you will find some self-help options. The following video demonstrates how to edit the pages but if you need help on uploading them you will need to check with Google again.
(Best seen maximised or in HD direct from Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgPXFiX5z_w)
Zdnet found 10 projects Google should kill after the demise of the Wave beta yesterday.
Are you still surprised when you discover a friend on a new social network? The number of useful social media sites is growing. Specialist sites for our interests help keep us focused as opposed to facebook and twitter.
You have to be specific to be terrific, as my mentor used to say. Facebook and Twitter are great just so long as you have a good tool to agrregate the data (sly reference to PalRelay).
I recently joined SoundCloud and managed to get martynwalker as a username. A couple of days later I was contacted by an old school buddy.
How valuable is that? A school friend not spoken to since 1974 contacted me and we enjoyed a 36 year catchup that we couldn’t hoped to have done without social media.
He found me as I favourited a musician we both like and my username rang a bell (or should that be a triangle?).
List of circular walks in East Anglia
My walks, hikes, rambles, kloofing, backpacking, excursions, treks, and walkabouts return to the starting point making it easy to plan your day.
Walks range from 5 to 15 miles and average 7. I am not a fast walker and prefer each walk to take 5 to 6 hours. I don't like roads and they only appear on my routes for transit or to cross.
I use Ordnance Survey maps and a compass. All my walks are free and come with a route card and grid references. If you have MS Word 2007+ and Mapsource from Garmin you can download a free route card generator that produces a neat list of waypoints with elevation and distance information.
