“Twitter is Not a Social Network” – Back of the Napkin Analysis

From the ReadWriteWeb article by Sarah Perez:

“Kevin Thau, Twitter’s VP for business and corporate development, announced during a presentation at Nokia World 2010 today that everyone’s favorite micro-blogging network is not actually a social network.

It’s not, you say? No, says Thau: Twitter is for news. Twitter is for content. Twitter is for information.“

 

Say what? 

Here’s my take on why:

  • Twitter is having issues growing as a mainstream social network compared to other platforms such as Facebook. Significant changes to its basic interface can fix this but that would mean it looses its stronghold on remaining the globes premier digital water cooler.
  • Lets face it, 99% of Twitter is already broadcast content and if its a business tweeting, its mostly one way Marketing. I guess Twitter believes that as well.
  • It limits its exposure to a potentially dwindling market valuation as it stays associated for too long with general purpose networks. The track record for those in second place (Bebo, MySpace etc) is pretty shabby. And most of us are happy doing general purpose networking inside Facebook, Location based networking on Foursquare etc, Food based networking on Chowhound and my new favorite app, Foodspotting (HT, Dion Hinchcliffe). And on and on. There may just not be room for two general purpose social networks but certainly for a real time news pipeline.
  • Monetizing cryptic, abbreviated, 140 characters via ads is hard and may have limited potential. Straight line syndication, promoted tweets, and large b2b biz dev deals (such as the one with Nokia and with Google) bring wholesale, but forecast-able sources of revenue. Thereby establishing a baseline market value to build a multiple off of. Facebook is on a tear from a revenue standpoint and either you have to show you are catching up or, re-frame the markets perception of the category in which you play.
  • Publishing (the industry), has been ripe for disruption for a long time and is looking for scalable ways to distribute content. RSS had potential for distribution but sucked for high end monetization in addition to being gobbledygook for most mainstream users. Twitter on the other hand keeps you coming back to high end website impressions. And so the broadcast model via twitter is a lucrative and cost effective ‘paper boy’ model for the digital era.
  • I know from personal experience that many people sign up but don’t really do much or even return for fear of not having friends or having something to say. As stated in the article, this brand shift removes the perception that you HAVE to sign up and use twitter. Rather, come to the site and just read. In short, more eyeballs without a registration barrier. Biz Dev just got a lot more interesting.

I’m as interested in the message this sends about its future plans and roadmap to developers as well as to those of us that have spent time using it as a social network.

That’s all the time I have. Any other ideas on why they would publicly put a stake in the ground about this?

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