Check out what Dan Schwabel, author of Me 2.0, posted on Facebook:
I’m not surprised. For many months I’ve been wondering about Twitter… as the value it’s given me (that is, the responses I get on my tweets, retweets, relevant tweets, etc.) has changed. Sad to say, but the value has decreased.
The new change in interface they made, where I can’t click a link to see just the tweets that have @jasonalba in them, makes it a pain to see any relevant content.
Less relevant content = less reason for me to be there
Harder for me to see conversations = less reason for me to be there
I can’t imagine I’m the only one thinking this. I’m not even going to talk about the complete uselessness of trending topics (which are usually vulgar or less-than-sophomoric), and Twitter’s head-scratching inability to keep spam down. For crying out loud, how come they can block some tweets/countries, but can’t block the spammers? Are you serious? I get so much spam crap (DM as well as @replies)… how can they block some stuff but let SO MUCH spam get through?
It seems irresponsible.
Don’t get me wrong… I like Twitter for some things. I think some things they’ve done are brilliant, and Facebook and LinkedIn should have done them, but overall, it’s become a place with significantly less value than what I had a couple of years ago, which is sad 🙁
One last thing… Dan is not a rookie whiner, not knowing what he’s talking about. He’s been a very active Twitter user:
What do you think… is Twitter going the way of the Dodo bird?
There’s definitely too much spam. That has always been the #1 problem in my eyes. I’d be surprised if Twitter’s growth hadn’t already plateaued (or even begun to shrink).
MySpace died because other social networks competed and did a better job than it. So far, for what Twitter is (and Facebook it isn’t), no other network is placed to kill it just yet.
The problems are fixable and they’re smart enough to fix them, but since the spam issue has endured so long, it does make you wonder.
With Apple baking it in as the preferred sharing method in the new iOS it is only going to get bigger. The key to making Twitter work, for people who follow a lot of people (THIS IS NOT THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE), is to use list. The list limit the amount of spam and make Twitter much more effective as tool.
As an aside, you can search for all tweets containing @jasonalba
Christopher- the point about Apple is a great point, I forgot about that.
Twitter Search is still limited. The last time I checked, results only went back 10 days.
Christopher, that’s a good point… will be interesting to see how that affects it.
I do not like to have to search for @jasonalba… I think the design change was pretty lame… and I’ve found myself going to Twitter a lot less since they made that change 🙁 Maybe it’s just me…
TweetDeck – the older, AIR-based one – is still my main point of entry, so the design change hasn’t impacted my Twitter use at all.
I’ve used the third party desktop tools — Seesmic, Tweetdeck, and Hootsuite — before. I don’t like them. I’ll open them occasionally (as in a few times a year). I use twitter.com on my imac and mobile apps on my mobile devices.
This has nothing to do with the ux and everything to do with the spammers. I am continually blocking people who tweet me nonsense. I care less about who follows me.
Ok, twitter is losing value. What next?
@Steve, that’s the million dollar question. Ari makes a good point… perhaps it’s not the platform, but the tools… will the tools have more power than the platforms?