Is Twitter a fad?

Is Twitter a Fad?

In 140 characters or less, what do you think?

Not a registered Twitter user? Unsure of your reply tweet? No need to worry. If you have yet to board the Twitter express, I don’t want to be one to yell to you from the caboose window as us loyal Twitterers laugh like crazed weasels in our train seats, tweeting opinionated nonsense about the new season of Entourage and posting Bit.lylinks about the economic stimulus plan via our app-ready cell phones.

Why do I refrain from passing judgment on those less Twitteriffic than I, you ask?

It’s simple. As your knowledgeable Web 2.0 Examiner, I’m only here to inform, not coax you down a biased path that I have myself trodden.

Comfortable yet? Read on.

I regularly and routinely use Twitter as of two months ago. I’m no power user by any means, but I know why I use it, how I can use it to my advantage, and the precise number of people that care about my daily, sometimes hourly leap off Twitter’s “What are you doing?” springboard, one that has spawned more global tweets than Ashton Kutcher has humorless ideas.

It’s sixty. Sixty people care what I’m doing. Out of close to 4.5 million registered Twitter users. Be jealous of my godly presence.

These sixty underlings gathering around my Internet footprint are one of the many reasons why I can’t personally condemn Twitter to the bottomless pit of tired Internet fads, the one where it would freefall with FML, LOLCats, and Chuck Norris facts. I’m going to supplement this introduction through my own validation, addressing why Twitter may or may not be a fad, and the variables in place that could swing the vote. However, my beliefs will remain static. Don’t let that sway you.

Let’s begin with how Twitter applies to my life. You know that raunchy old man who obscurely mumbles and feeds flocks of pigeons all day in the same park the local kids play in? That’s me, but more Twittery. I tweet (post) several times a day to an immediate network spanning 1300 people through a link between my Twitter and Facebook accounts. Any one of these 1300 birds is capable of retweeting (reposting) my message and virally spreading it to their respective social networks. The impact has catastrophic potential.

If you don’t understand Twitter’s bird allusion yet, please Google “how birds communicate”.

Twitter’s advantages to a non-celebrity-status techie like me are transparent. No matter how many incompetent social media bloggers decide to cut against the grain of popular web trends by posting wafts of anti-Twitter propaganda on their blogs, I find Twitter beneficial to my daily purpose, so I use it. End of story. For someone like me, it has become too much of a sensible addiction to attempt to push out and ignore like the haunting memory of an ex-girlfriend.

Other than Twitter’s viral implications, I also attribute the follower count - the number of people who care “what I am doing” – as another reason why Twitter grafted itself in to my daily routine. The number count cascades either at a gradual, moderate pace, or in sharp and infrequent bursts pending the quality of my tweeted content. It is all up to me and how far I can spread my message. Receiving an e-mail saying “(username) is now following you on Twitter!” is bar none when it comes to things that make my day, almost at the same level as shooting hoops with Jesus.

I’m wearing out the refresh button in Firefox just thinking about it. That’s the OCD talking.

I ask myself, can these compulsions be subdued? As time passes and new social media outlets emerge, will the Starbucks-drinking generation of media hipsters go cold turkey on Twitter’s methodology long enough to render it a dead trend? Another washed-up, heavily Botoxed face in the crowd of scorned web applications? In light of the two-hour Twitter outage last week that caused a worldwide outcry – reflective of Twitter’s overall success thus far – it seems appropriate to address this question that encompasses so many more:

Is Twitter a fad?

Let’s take a journey to the emerald city of numerical Twitter data. Launched in July 2006 and as a standalone company in April 2007, Twitter has seen a significant growth in the last two to three years, thankfully attributed to nearly $57 million in three rounds of venture capital funding it received. It is now heralded as the third most-used social network falling behind only to Facebook and Myspace, respectively, sustaining a rough estimate of 6 million unique page views per month, translating to 200,000 views a day, and that excludes the various mobile applications used to update a Twitter profile on the fly. Frankly, I’d go as far as to say I’d be wholeheartedly surprised if you haven’t visited the Twitter website since you began reading this article, you fiend.

I’ll admit I’m that neurotic if you’re afraid to admit it yourself. Twitter.com recorded nearly 300,000 minutes of web-based viewing time in April 2009, up a staggering 3712% from April 2008. That’s close to 5,000 monthly hours of mindless gazing pleasure on which to zone out and drool upon. I have formed a small but growing puddle in the last month and a half.

Twitter also recorded a monthly user base growth of roughly 1,382% from March 2009 to April 2009 and an Alexa global ranking of fourteen among all Internet sites in existence. It’s hard to stake a claim against Twitter when presented with this gigantic factual palette, but someone has to be the devil’s advocate. Too many communication mediums exist in this day and age for an opposing voice to go unheard. The Internet is an open town meeting where everyone can speak loudly and out of turn without needing any rational thought to stand upon. Hear ye, hear ye, someone has an opinion on the Internet.

A reason for this defiance must exist. A finger always has a direction to point. Debates have a core; a centralized thought upon which to breed their seductively entrancing banter ever engaging to the human senses. When looking at the reverse side of the coin, what evil facet of Twitter garners it the same reputation as grandma’s coffee table, wobbling at its foundation and slowly adapting the stale scent of decay?

Most skeptics would agree that Twitter’s main cause for concern is its user retention rate, or how many new users actually make use of Twitter past the initial sign-up phase. This percentage floats steadily around 40%, a number that includes all mobile and desktop add-ons used to update Twitter feeds despite controversial rumors that the number only applies to the web-based tweets. Unfortunately for Twitter’s executives, those rumors are not true. The 40% user retention rate remains the same when considering Twitter’s web-based input alone versus all web, text, cell, and desktop input combined.

Others would say that its fad aura stems from the overuse and promotion of celebrity accounts for the sake of brand recognition for (insert company name here) and Twitter itself. I can attest to this with a personal example.

At a local home-town diner last Sunday - Kosta’s in Ebensburg, PA, great food if your GPS can actually locate Ebensburg, PA - a flatscreen on the wall featured CNN as the preferred channel for church-time brunch. John McCain’s leathery profile graced the screen, apparently in the midst of a live interview, and although I could not hear any audibles, he stated, and I quote:

“Twitter is a phenomenal way of communicating.”

I almost spit coffee in the opposing booth seat.

Really, John? In a July 2008 interview with The New York Times, you were asked “Do you go online for yourself?”, and again I quote your response:

“They go on for me. I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself.”

Apparently, this is how Twitter’s image has been manipulated in a year’s time. Tech-illiterate figures like John McCain are supporting its communicative prowess. Ouch. Watching that interview was like watching a pool drain at the end of the summer, the final swirl of water around the drain resembling the last of Twitter’s legitimacy.

Being a tech-savvy Twitter fan myself, I pondered these divergent claims for nearly two weeks, researching their validity and honing all of the statistics I could find to attempt to prove the critics wrong. I wish I could write that they were, in fact, incorrect, but I can’t without jeopardizing my sincerity as a writer. Twitter’s new user retention rate is terrible compared to that of Facebook and Myspace, which both hover near 70% and have had solid, proven foundations for years running with Facebook currently reigning supreme in all areas besides music.

I guess I must have missed the memo about using Myspace to watch music videos. Am I upset about it? Not really. Trying to navigate a Myspace page is like trying to drive from Pennsylvania to California cuffed and blindfolded.

What does concern me, however, is how Twitter is going to rebound from all of this negative criticism. This is where the user retention rate becomes a variable. Personally, my initial presumption of Twitter was that John or Sally Mae from Kentucky could catch wind of the service, register for it on their factory-built Dell, and then be dumped in to an empty, arid space with no guidance or sense of direction. Being an IT and web design professional, my nerd network on Twitter was preexistent. More often than not, however, users of the John and Sally Mae stereotype register for Twitter because they saw the brand plastered all over MSNBC’s headlines and “wanted to see what the hype was all about”, then add to the 55.5% of Twitter users who don’t follow anyone at all. Human curiosity and/or ADD at its finest.

Not only does this assumption hold true for average Internet users, I have personally watched it happen to a number of friends and family of mine who have signed up for Twitter, only to find out that Lindsay Lohan’s thoughts on Shark Week are not all that interesting. Actually, nothing on her Twitter page is all that interesting. (See for yourself at http://twitter.com/sevinnyne6126) She falls in the 10% of Twitter users who create 90% of Twitter’s content. In the same breath, 54.9% of Twitter’s accounts have never tweeted and 52.7% have no followers whatsoever. A paradox in itself; if you sit on the sidelines and don’t participate in the game, nobody is going to pay attention to what you are doing.

A valuable lesson. Remember kids, people only pay attention to you if you drive inebriated through Hollywood under heavy influence of cocaine and alcohol. Let’s thank the all-seeing combination of TMZ and Wikipedia for that zinger.

Conclusively, if Joe Six-Pack (remembering Sarah Palin) does not receive immediate value from Twitter as humans have been conditioned to seek, why should anyone make a return trip? A whopping 80% of Twitter accounts have less than ten followers, and 30% of Twitter accounts have zero followers. Zero. I am confident these numbers resonate louder and louder within the minds of Twitter’s executives as activists label Twitter a craze rather than a social necessity, and stamp it a fad once and for all.

Yet, Twitter’s founding board does have a subtle response to those irreverent cackles. They rejected a $500 million dollar buyout offer from Facebook last winter, and have stated that they could easily throw advertisements on the site to help pay the bills, but generating revenue using that method is not the most creative way to make Twitter a profitable service. They have other plans in mind.

Touché, Twitter executives, touché, but when are you going to lay down that ace?

Only time will tell. For now, make your own judgment about Twitter while the trend is hot and I’m cool, because neither may last long. If you haven’t joined yet, become a statistic. I encourage you. Although I can’t guarantee you won’t fall in to the category of “Twitter Quitter” like our old pals John and Sally Mae, you’ll at least be able to tell everybody/nobody in 140 characters or less why Twitter is, or isn’t, a fad. In the very least, I’ll follow you, just so your experience is remotely worthwhile.

Maybe this was a persuasive article after all.

@EveryoneReading - This is @followmarko, tweeting out.