As Twitter strives to become a more lucrative business, it is arguably getting less consumer and developer friendly.
The introduction of “Promoted Tweets” and the growing crackdown of how its API can be used by third-parties are indications of how Twitter operates is changing. People may not like these changes but they’re unlikely to leave Twitter because there’s nowhere else to go.
The lack of competition is one of the most interesting angles about Twitter. Ever since Pownce shut down in 2008, there really hasn’t been any competition for Twitter. Sure, Identi.ca is still around but it is still hanging around the edges, while players such as Plurk and Jaiku (which was acquired and then ignored by Google) have disappeared from the scene.
It raises the question about whether there is an opportunity for an alternative to Twitter to emerge, and what it would take for it to establish a foothold.
With more than 500 million users, Twitter has the power of size, community and loyalty. No one wants to leave a raging party even if the host starts to act strange.
But what if someone decided to throw a “party”? What would they have to offer people in terms of features, usability, an API, etc. to convince people to leave Twitter? If something interesting came along, what would it take for people to take it for a test ride?
In an ideal world, competition would be a good thing for Twitter and consumers. It would keep Twitter honest and cognizant of competitive threats, while consumers would benefit from having companies battling for their attention and loyalty.
What do you think? Is it too late for a strong rival to Twitter to emerge? If not, what would it take?
While I agree that twitter has some down points, so does every other social platform on the web. I think the better option to looking for an alternative is looking at ways to work with twitter and make it work for your brand. As a brand, I’ve found twitter to be a hole filler – an entry level discussion with potential buyers. It doesn’t feel as involved as many of the other platforms, which makes it easier to start a conversation without it being a sales pitch.
Overall, the best solution is improvement on the existing platform…not attempted replacement.
Competition is healthy and Twitter will only get more arrogant in its absence. Like Google is and MS was until it became irrelevant.
Several have been built. Network effects are strong. :/
My own hat: http://rstat.us
Also: http://identi.ca
Both are 100% federated and open source. They can even talk to each other through the common OStatus protocol.
I’ve been working on a Twitter “alternative”, that is video based and more focused on conversations as opposed to self-broadcasting.
We’re almost ready to launch, could be as soon as next week.
It’s called http://AskBox.me if anyone is interested.
If only people thought this much about more real, exciting, and immediate problems like alternative energy, space technology, drug / medical technology, etc.
Twitter and Facebook simply are hot, but in 20 years what will people REALLY care / think about? How SpaceX landed on the moon, or how we used to care so much about social networking?
I’m sorry to be a negative nancy, I just wish more engineers / programmers would try to utilize their talents to work on more important AND exciting problems over just social networks -_-
Also, for you guys making the Twitter clones / alternatives hoping to succeed. You guys LITERALLY copied Twitter – 140 chars or less, etc. It has to be DIFFERENT if you want to succeed. Not the same …
I think a decentralized P2P microblog network could replace Twitter.
But look at Jabber–that never really replaced AIM and Yahoo IM. People switched to social networks and Skype for IM. So it’s possible something new comes along before your Twitter-killer goes mainstream. On the other hand, IRC is still popular all these years, some things never change.
However, Twitter is buggy. 90% of the time I need to click reload, reload, reload just to see someone’s profile. The design isn’t responsive, the API limits shold be more generous, URL-shortening is a mess, they routinely kick 3rd party developers in the nuts, it could be better IMO.
I think it would very tough to replace Twitter. Twitter has a ton of followers and with the integration of other things like image sharing and maybe video sharing/streaming would make it very hard for anyone to accomplish this task….good luck and if you need help let me know
Maybe not a Twitter like service. A new service would have to be more than different. It would have to provide a significant added value for users to change their habbits and adopt it.
I’m trying to solve the “broken” mail and phone problem. These are open communication system because they allow anyone to enter in contact with anyone at any time and from anywhere. It is their fundamental and specific property. The problem is abuse of this communication channel with spam, undesirable commercial offers, personnal harrassement, … And restricting address diffusion looses the benefit of its fundamental property. This is what I pretend to solve with my project.
IM and social networks are more closed and serve a different purpose: stay connected with friends and share information.
Contact me if you want to
PJ: You’re right; it’s difficult for anything in the high-tech world to have long-term staying power. You make a good point about how Twitter has thrived despite its technical woes. Thanks for the comment.
Looks like an interesting service. Good luck!
Steve: Thanks for stepping up to let me know about rstat.us. Good to know there are alternatives out there! cheers, Mark
I think there is already very viable alternatives to Twitter in the emerging markets such as China. I read aan article on mash several days ago (http://mashable.com/2012/07/02/china-social-networks/) that discussed the chinese social networks. Apparently the chinese equivalent of twitter is Weibo (http://www.weibo.com/) and they already have twice the number of users as Twitter. I think it will be difficult for twitter to crack these markets because of the regional advantage some of these social networks already have.
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Yet another sort-of-Twitter-alternative: Crowfrog (http://crowfrog.com/). Seems to allow rich text messages. Still alpha though.
I’d join. Hell, Twitter has turned into Twit. Is there anything that’s not about money but about the music? Twitter has been sucking.