Not So-So Blog

Like many people we don’t get why we should actually Twitter. Isn’t Twitter just IRC with an RSS and SMS output? Some people try to figure what Twitter might offer in the future, like… sports commenting? Wasn’t this what we were doing in 1996: life ‘IRC reporting’ from Suikerrock?
And then there is the confusion on the cost of receiving Twitter updates via SMS. The terms of service mention nothing concrete on it. In the US, unlike in Europe, many mobile operators charge users for receiving SMS. Americans cry out loud when they receive their monthly bill and Europeans don’t get who’s actually paying all that incoming traffic from their friends; the comments on Ev’s post are a revealing proof of the confusion.

Multi-person SMS services are not new and to us they are just chat with an SMS output. The problem is that Twitter (currently) doesn’t take care of many problems which old-school chat appstook care of:
- grouping friends is impossible
- we have to write in English, or 90% of my tweets get lost
- no context: volume over relevance
What happened to IRC will eventually be Twitter’s fate: some people will spend hours of their beautiful summer days on it; most won’t. Luciana wrote a good analysis why Twitter is not taking off in Brazil, the country which provides the ultimate acid-test when it comes to the success of online social platforms.

But all this doesn’t bother us.
What actually frightens us is the Twitter sign-of-the-times. It reveals we are again in the 2000 Bubble haydays. The interview Jason did with Evan Williams says it all:

It’s amazing to see that all journalsist who have been analysing the 2000 bubble-burts are now again loosing their left brain. Sofar, only the Financial Times prooved of some rational insight:
1. Twitter is sending at least 70.000 text messages out from its service.
2. They don’t get any kickback for US users paying to receive Twitter SMS updates; quite bizar, but we’ll trust Evan on his word.
3. Even with the juiciest bulk contract, they still pay 0,015 EU to send an SMS message out. This is still 1.050 EU a day or 31.500 EU a month ! and rising rapidly; to our estimate even doubling every month.

So, now BizStone and Evan are pulling out +30.000 EU to get those Twitter Messsages to your mobile, while they have no clue which business model will ever plug that exponentially growing hole.
We’d love to see the investor pitch of their Dog & Pony show !

This is why we are scared of Twitter; they smell like the next ‘dotcom boom’ story. And we hoped with the 2000 lessons-learned we would be spared of that. All the wow and press and their capability to attrackt (a very specific) community is one part. But what about the hard bit? Or is that part left for the insane who will eventually buy Twitter?

Update: we have an early autumn this year.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 15th, 2007 at 1:45 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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