Furrier.org - Business & Technology Blog

Eric Eldon is reporting that Twitter traffic rising not falling.  Kara Swisher challenged everyone yesterday and posed the question will Twitter fail.  That got the elite in the blogosphere talking.  I believe that I was the only one who took the bold position that twitter will FAIL.

I immediately got twitters from folks like Danny Sullivan and others like Danny who know what they are talking about.  Fact is my prediction is this:  Twitter the company will fail but not Twitter the paradigm.  Why do I say this?  Because Twitter’s innovation (product gurus) could be their downfall.  They need to think like infrastructure or operating systems people not AJAX developers - meaning get some core IP defined and owned it fast otherwise the core asset runs out of control.

Some may disagree with me and that’s fine.  I’d love to debate it anytime here at 654 High Street, Palo Alto, CA - the new home of the Social MediaHaus or on Twitter: @Furrier

Bold Prediction:  Twitter will fail.

Kara Swisher asks for a prediction on Twitter.

I love twitter and use it daily but what strikes me is the lack of ‘technical competitive strategy’.  Twitter runs the risk of being so open that it might not ever make money.  Ok so everyone is talking about monetization, but my take is different.  If I worked at Twitter I could have that business at $100m fast - it just seems an easy thing to do.  The key to their success is the platform and the concept called ‘value leakage’.

Everyday when a new twitter clients comes out Twitter loses value.  This may seem counterproductive but in a systems business the main vendor needs a ‘core’.  It seems that Twitter might just lose their core value if it  doesn’t implement some technical competitive strategy - meaning lock in a value core and build on it.  Twitter to me just seems to be a runaway success and out of control from both a scale and sustainable perspective.

I love Twitter but their braintrust needs to jam on a value core to build on their openness.

It’s no surprise that Howard Rheingold loves and is addicted to Twitter.  I have been at the center of social networking and social media from day one and have seen tools come and go.  Twitter is the real deal. 

Many people don’t get it and will never get it.  Where’s the business model - they cry.  Many see Twitter as a geek utility - a low cost to run utility.   It is clearly a solid communication utility. 

Where’s the Beef people ask?   Two Areas: 

1)  Communication and Coordination:    At PodTech we did many social media experiments and one of them was implementing Twitter mobs to drive brand awareness - we used as a communication tool to create an engaged ”smart mob”.  Did it work.  It sure did. 

2)  Smart Collaboration:   Another area that Twitter rules is what I call the “smart collaborative mob”.   This is the Web 2.0 “holy grail”.   

Let me give some examples:  I have been personally using it this way for sometime in vetting out my next venture.  Also, more publically take a look at Seesmic and Loic Lemur.  He is actively using Twitter as a collaboration tool to build his business - I love that about Seesmic.  Just this weekend Loic Lemur was going through 900 feature ideas from the community - talk about smart mobbing for collaboration.  It’s open source entrepreneurship - high quality, efficient and low cost.

Twitter is one major component for Social Media but it can’t be used unless it has a community.  

Where’s the big business model in Twitter? 

Answer:  “Smart Collaboration”

Who owns it:?  Everyone

Who makes money:?  Everyone and Twitter