Why is Twitter winning when it isn’t the best? It’s the swarm and peeps who win out.
March 27, 2008 by Tris Hussey
Filed under Business
Tim Walker and I were chatting on Twitter this morning about Twitter, Jaiku, and Pownce. It started with my question: “How many folks here also update Pownce and Jaiku? Both have fallen off my radar, eventhough both have more features.”
Sure I could update both Pownce and Jaiku through Twhirl, but why? I don’t go there to check replies, conversations or threads. Through the conversation of tweets and DMs, Tim and I agreed that this smelled like a great blog post. He beat me to the punch:
Is that enough to explain its success? I don’t know — but I’d love to hear what you think. Source: May the best product win? — Hoover’s Business Insight Zone
So what is it? For me it’s all about Newton. No, not the PDA, Sir Isaac. Inertia and momentum. Twitter started gaining huge amounts of momentum last year at SXSWi and by summer it became the de facto backchannel for tech events and conferences. Sure Pownce and Jaiku came out and offered interesting things. Pownce has groups, events, file sharing. Jaiku lets me (as I just noted on FriendFeed) pull in other streams into my Jaiku stream. None of those things keep me there. I flirted with both services for a while (especially when Twitter was more than a tad wonky), but eh, Twitter kept pulling me back.
Bottom line the momentum and inertia that Twitter has built up means that, essentially, my friends are there. The people I want to chat with (in 140 characters or fewer), the news I want to get (and blog), the cool people I keep meeting (way to many to mention here–and I’d surely forget someone), and just the other “stuff” that goes on (I’m not too sure about this colour wars things, but hey).
Take MS Office vs WordPerfect. It was momentum and early marketshare that made this a battle over before it finished (I started with IE vs Firefox too, but I think the tide might be turning there). MS Office isn’t the greatest set of tools in the world, but we all are forced to save things in DOC, XLS, and PPT format, why? Because that’s what everyone else uses. Send an OpenOffice doc and you’ll get emails back that “I can’t open this…”. It isn’t better, it’s momentum.
Twitter got the momentum (and mindshare) early and has kept it. In spite of its failings, we stick with Twitter. Can it lose the lead and be replaced? Oh certainly. Look at Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel. Right now, though, Twitter just needs to stay stable and improve some key things and they will sail on.
I’ve signed up for Jaiku, Pownce and Twitter, but it’s Twitter I keep coming back to. But it’s not because of the momentum…it’s the simplicity of the concept. Sure, there are times when I wish I had more than just 140 character to spit out some idea I have, but on the other hand, I see the massive screeds that some people post on Pownce and I just tune out. Plus, those long dumps in the middle of my Pownce stream make it more difficult to concentrate on the content there that I’d actually find interesting.
Twitter, on the other hand, makes it incredibly easy for me to quickly scroll through all the things my contacts are saying…and if they have more than 140 characters they’ll reference a url with more info (like you did with the Twitter msg that led me to this post). It’s pretty easy to figure out when I’m not interested in a topic in just a few words, but when I go to Pownce I’m clobbered over the head with the whole shebang, not just the headline.
Is Pownce the better platform? Undoubtedly, for people who are sharing links and files. But since I don’t really want to do that, I ultimately only come back to Pownce once every week or two and almost never post there. I’d like to be able to set it up so that my Pownce stream re-tweets my Twitter posts (like Jaiku does)…but so far I’ve been so disengaged from the Pownce experience that I haven’t bothered putting in the time trying to figure out if it’s even possible.
Sean simplicity is a great point and I had forgotten about it. Twitter is dead simple and does one thing and does it pretty well.
And like you found this post through a tweet, I find all kinds of great things as well.
Simplicity, content, friends. What else do you need?
The other thing that’s worth noting is the power dynamic with Twitter and the power dynamic with Pownce — with Twitter you have “followers”, or people who are following what you are posting. Fair enough. But on Pownce, they’ve made the odd decision to label people who follow you as “fans” if you don’t follow them back, which has sociological baggage that’s unnecessary. Because of this, on Pownce, I’ve added back almost everyone who’s added me, which makes my Pownce stream far less useful as a source of tips and information.
I realize that both of these services allow users to only follow people they want to follow, which means they’re as spam-free as you choose to make them, and ultimately this is probably a semantic argument. But I think it counts — the way the companies have chosen to frame the relationship of followers and posters makes a difference in my mind as to how I’m actually going to use the service.
I think you’re right, Twitter got the early lead and has hung on to it. That said, I see no downside to updating multiple services. I regularly post to Twitter, Facebook, Jaiku, Tumblr, Pownce, and Bebo.
Sean, you know I always thought the fan thing was odd on Pownce. It did make seem like the person didn’t want to read your stuff because you stayed a “fan”. So, yeah, that’s a subtle but important sociological distinction.
Mack, Facebook I do update (through Twitter), but the others, well since I don’t really want to participate, I don’t bother.
BTW, Sean, I’m expecting more sage words from you soon. ;)