Will Twitter be Obsolete in 5 years?

With their user base of 20,000,000 tweeters growing every day, it’s obvious that twitter is here to stay. But for how long?

New, viable technology seems to come out of the woodwork every few months or so. MySpace was the king of the social networking kingdom until facebook came along and conquered it. Now twitter is here, and while facebook hasn’t become obsolete as a result, twitter is most certainly eating into facebook’s market share. What’s next? Fardo? Zigmat? Breadstomp?

Thus, this social networking ninja believes it inevitable that by 2015 twitter will be an afterthought. With that said, I should add a caveat that as twitter hasn’t even established a real revenue model it’s a bit early to be playing Chopin’s Funeral March. Instead, I’ll bring to light some potential draw backs and flaws with twitter as it currently stands.

Firstly, like most social media, twitter is home to tens of thousands of spammer accounts. There isn’t anything quite like a solicitor to drive people away from, well, anything. While I feel it acceptable to use software and trains to find niche followers, the use of automated tweeting programs is wholly antithetical to the purpose of social networking. Social media is supposed to be just that: Social. It is my opinion that spammers crack the foundation of social media such as twitter and as such they should be unfollowed and left to die or change their methods. There isn’t a thing wrong as far as I can tell, with promoting your blog, website, business, etc, with honest to God, helpful, informative or otherwise REAL tweets.

The solution to this problem? Unfollow spammers. There are several great tools that work to that very simple end. TweetBlocker gives a grade (A+ thru F) to each and every person you follow. When it finishes compiling the data, which may take some time for larger accounts, simply sort by grade and delete Fs and Ds. Aside from using software to fix our problems we also have to be diligent to moderate our own accounts. If you suspect someone you’re following to be spam, have a look at their recent tweets by clicking on their avatar (their picture). If you see them tweeting over and over about mundane things like what show their watching, it’s likely that they are spamming with some kind of automatic tweeter. If every tweet they make contains a link to a site or some kind of sales pitch, unfollow them.

I’m pro-twitter for sure, so let me just remind you that scrubbing our accounts clean of spam will help ensure twitter stays viable for as long as possible.

Lastly, a downside I see with twitter is that as it’s going on year 4, it still suffers technical problems like downtime and over-capacity errors. I don’t know what they’re waiting for to fix these problems, but I haven’t personally seen the same issues with facebook. If the trend continues as twitter grows, it’s likely that people will get frustrated with it and move on. And what will they move onto you ask? Well, as I mentioned earlier, those with the technical prowess and creativity to come up with the new frontier in social media will provide something. And that’s really all it comes down to. Maybe it will be a page that follows what you’re doing on the web right now. Maybe it will social bookmark, update and post comments on blogs for you based on your surfing habits. Maybe it’ll remind you to buy milk next time you’re out. Whatever it does, it’s coming!

Is Twitter great? Yes! Will it be here forever? No. Our recommendation: Tweet on, don’t automate your tweets and give those that do the boot. Also, be aware of new, rising social media. And like you should do with twitter, ride the wave as long is it will last!