When you hear about Twitter these days it’s always about it’s incredible success. Twitter’s growth has continued to spike and has had a major impact on the world wide web. How long do you think it’s going to last? Twitter may be in today but in my opinion it’s going to be out in a few years if not sooner.
Here are 10 reasons why Twitter is most likely going to fail in the next few years:
1. Lack of Use
None of my friends tweet, preferring instead to use Facebook. When I see that I’m one of the few teenagers using Twitter, in a technologically adept school, it makes me realize just how unpopular Twitter is in our age group. Maybe it’s more popular in different demographics? While searching I came across a report on Mashable showing that only 21% of Twitter users are active. Not only that, 34% of the total amount of users have never even tweeted, while a whopping 73% have tweeted less than 10 times. It begs the question: who really does use Twitter?
2. Poor Revenues
Twitter only recently came up with a way to make money, Promoted Tweets. The system allows advertisers to display promoted tweets in search results and timelines.
The problem is that this revenue system could only work as long as Twitter users are very active. However, as previously stated, only a small percentage of users are active. In other words, this revenue system will be highly ineffective as Twitter slows down.
3. Loss of Interest
Novelty factor was a big portion of Twitter’s success. The incredible growth rate proved just that. As the novelty of Twitter wears out, less and less people are going to stick with it.
4. Bots and Spam
One of my biggest problems with Twitter has been spam. 24% of tweets have been created by “spammy” bots. When I look at my Twitter account, it seems that almost 90% of my timeline is filled with spam. Why would anyone want to continue using a service with that much junk mail?
5. Competition
One word, Facebook. Facebook is the social media behemoth of today and possibly tomorrow. As long as Facebook stays that way, Twitter will never take its place.
6. 3rd Parties
Twitter is too simple and requires too many third party services in order to do anything clever. This has led to the growth of Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, TwitterCounter, Twitter Karma, TweepML and so many other services. This is asking too much of users and most users will not want to do this.
7. The Next Fad
As with most social media networks, competition will take users elsewhere. Even Facebook may be replaced one day, just as Myspace was. It may happen sooner rather than later with Twitter due to lack of interest and loss of users.
8. Fail Whale
I keep thinking, I’m going to have make an oath that I’ll quit Twitter if I see the Fail Whale one more time. For those of you that don’t know what I’m referring to, the Fail Whale is the image that shows up when Twitter is down. About every other time I visit Twitter, the site is down.
9. Lack of Purpose
Honestly, do you understand what Twitter is about? I don’t at all and highly doubt that I’m alone. That same Mashable’s report actually dealt with this issue. 87% of Americans are aware of Twitter but only 7% use it, which shows that a huge number of people don’t understand it.
10. Security Issues
There are potentially major security risks associated with Twitter and as those risks become exploited over time, the brand will become less and less appealing to most people. Recently, major figures have had their accounts hacked, and spammers continually make Twitter unsafe.