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Twitter loses plot

Picture credit: mallix

Picture credit: mallix

Twitter made an arbitrary technical change yesterday and at a stroke inadvertently broke their business value proposition.

I won’t bore you with the technical details but  the change destroyed the future of the phenomenal network effect that has propelled millions of people to join Twitter.

The absolutely fundamental nature of Twitter has been the accelerated network effect of unconnected members finding new connections, through the simple serendipity of being able to see the conversations your contacts are having with others. The recent change has made that impossible.

Like many other Web 2.0 startups, Twitter has yet to identify the business model that will provide revenue – so it is simply burning the venture capital raised. It is one thing not knowing your eventual business model but it is quite a different thing not to understand the fundamentals of your business.

I recently published my advice for effective business alignment and the first key is a crystal clear understanding of the business. Twitter management clearly need to get such an understanding. And quickly.

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  • Kumud

    Annoying. Serendipity is a key benefit of twitter. Observing conversations, or snippets thereof, between people you don’t know (or only know one side of) can spark new ideas, interests, relationships. This change has taken the ‘social’ out of networking. This was a differentiator – twitter’s uniqueness. Now (other than convenience) may as well look at status updates on Facebook.

  • Rodolphe

    I assume you refer to what is explained here http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/the-trouble-with-twitters/

    I don’t use Twitter, but as I understand it, their problem might not be a lack of clear understanding of the business. Rather a lack of product.

    They have millions of clients who are faithful but are not paying. The new visiting ones are, by and large, not staying. A few years after they were created, they still do not have a revenue model.

    Twitter is a technology, not a business. THAT is their problem.

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