Twitter’s uniqueness could be it’s greatest disadvantage

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So all of us have heard of Twitter and 99% of those who have heard about it have got a Twitter profile. But what the area of concern is whether Twitter will be able to live up to the hype that has been created, it has become virtually synonymous with micro blogging now, as Google is to Internet search. Apart from the tweets of some celebrities, extremely famous politicians and some big and growing organizations, very few people tweet seriously. According to a survey recently conducted, some relevant findings regarding Twitter users were:
*55.50% weren’t following anyone
*54.88% have never tweeted
*52.71% have no followers
Though these facts might not be startling, but the fact that about 10% of the users account for 90% of the tweets is surely amazing. No doubt Twitter had grown exponentially over the last year. But is its hype justified? Apparently not. The major portion of the Twitter users prefer to sit back and watch the biggies do their tweeting and read their contents. This is virtually becoming an alternate to subscribing to their feeds, only difference being you are reading their stuffs instantly. The second aspect is that of celebrities tweeting out a lot and have an incredible number of tweets and follower count (wonder how they get the time to manage it alone!). So soon many journalists who are paid to keep tracks of these celebrities are going to lose their jobs 🙂 Thirdly the very disturbing fact is that many organizations are promoting their business extremely aggressively in Twitter, there’s a race of increasing their follower count as much they can, because then people will follow them back and listen to their advertising stuffs. This simply spoils the essence of Twitter. Flooding with links of your website isn’t what you should be doing.

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Twitter Algorithms and Use Cases
Twitter Algorithms and Use Cases

What the scenario turns out to be is that few people are using Twitter for personal communications, though that is what brings out the best out of this service. I prefer using it to share some of my personal opinions on various stuffs and occasionally some special stuffs am up to. The direct message's facility of Twitter is the only thing that will occasionally be useful to users, something in between chat and email. However besides that, there is no such aspect of Twitter that will keep users hooked to it away from Facebook, Orkut and Blogging. The community aspect is what is severely wanting in Twitter as people are only following one-to-one communications. So soon we may see 90% of the tweets coming from lesser number of users as more people keep sitting back and watching what they are saying. But with the advent of real-time search engines and hashtags gaining popularity at a stunning pace, only future can say whether Twitter will make its mark.

Author: Rahul Bhattacharya

Rahul is a journalist with expertise in researching a variety of topics and writing engaging contents. He is also a data analyst and an expert in visualizing business scenarios using data science. Rahul is skilled in a number of programming languages and data analysis tools. When he is not busy writing, Rahul can be found somewhere in the Appalachian trails or in an ethnic restaurant in Chicago.

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