«Return to Blog List What’s Wrong with Twitter

Actually nothing is wrong with Twitter, the application. The Twitter app is great, perhaps a work of genius. The problem lies with the culture that has developed around Twitter.

I’m a firm believer that less is more. "More," as in "more impact." Twitter culture, however, clearly believes more is more. If this was email, 90% of the stuff would be called spam, and there would be angry and alarmed calls for it to stop. In Twitterville, however, no one seems to mind. Of course, you can quit following people, but then the benefits of Twitter are also lost; not much of a solution.

The culture is being driven by some of the biggest names in social media, who live, eat and breathe social media. Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse, and Lee Odden, for instance, tweet as many as (sometimes more than) 20 times a day. Though I’m a fan of these people, I rarely follow any of their tweets. I know somewhere in there are some nuggets, but I don’t have the time or willingness to sort through all the stuff I don’t care about to find them.

My hope is that the Twitter culture matures into a platform on which the clutter is reduced, and clicking on a link in a tweet is more likely to have some value. I’m betting, however, that it’s headed for a scenario described by Yogi Berra referring to a restaurant: "Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too popular."

Tags: Communication, Marketing