Common Challenge

Bloggers, especially A-list ones like to trash services whenever a new and effective competitor apears. This is not a new thing by any means - when TV was announced radio was dead. When video was announced - cinema was dead. When computers were announced - books and paper were dead. But they’re all still walking. From economical point of view, a consumer here has a choice of two free products that serve a similar need (and are thus substitutes). Since the transaction cost (of for instance switching or simultaneous use) are marginal - consumer has no other incentive to choose one product over another than the utility she or he gets. On the other hand, with no usage cost consumer has absolutely no incentive to abandon either product completely. Thus one product must produce ultimately higher utility than it’s substitute to be a real winner. Which is usually the case when technological leap happens (CD to MP3 for instance).

So when someone is writing that Twitter will die because Friendfeed is here, or comments are dead because Seesmic (and Friendfeed) is here, or Myspace is dead because Facebook is here - they slept on history classes. The truth is - if you have two competing services, both of which are free (vide Radio vs TV) people will either:

1. split their attention
2. split into target groups

If #1 happens, you have to make sure to be able to give them as much access to your service as possible (so their possible attention span is longest). For comments on blog, that means they should be pulled back from Friendfeed. For Friendfeed it means posting a comment on blog and on Friendfeed should be simultaneous.

If #2 happens, you have to choose your side. That’s what  Facebook vs Myspace is all about: reality vs dreams. Someone once wrote that on FB people are who they are while on MS they show who they want to be. In other words it’s communication vs entartainment. Sometimes people get confused and that’s what happens.

In other words - it’s very unlikely that a free product would have no customers. Of course, it doesn’t mean it will survive because of business issues (such as lack of sufficient revenue), but it’s not beacuse all users will abandon it.

What it means for you? Don’t worry if you get some competition in your (free) space, even if it’s big. Focus on the user, focus on utility, and grab your market share.

Photo credit goes to: http://flickr.com/photos/eelssej_/

This is way off-topic, but I just couldn’t help myself. Everyone on blogosphere is using Twitter for communication, promotion and (sic!) spamming these days. And, of course, everyone is complaining whenever Twitter is down (which does happen quite often). There were various posts on Twitter’s scalability issues, wrong architecture and even CTO shifts. However, I haven’t read any serious analysis of Twitter’s problems. After all Skype processes a lot more date all the time and it doesn’t break anyhow (I recall just one outage - but a major one…). True - it’s not possible to have a conversation (even one-way) with 5,000 people on Skype, and this is (probably) why Twitter goes down so often. On the other hand, BitTorrent clients can communicate with hundreds of peers simultaneously with no hassle.

And then it hit me: Twitter is archaic. It is constantly trying to uphold the old client-to-server communication, which considering the scale is quite hard. Rather than focusing on scalability and performance of it’s servers it should have a totally different architecture: Peer 2 Peer. Of course - it wouldn’t be web-based then. Of course you’d have API issues. It would be harder to monetize. Maybe it is even impossible to plan. But it’s surprising no one mentioned it before. Maybe I’m wrong somewhere - I’m not an expert in architecture, - so please correct me if you have other opinion. But until no one proves me wrong, let’s face it - Twitter is archaic.

ps. (Unfortunately) After writing this I found an excellent post by Alex Iskold at RWW. He claims that changing Twitter into a protocol would not solve the technical problem (judging by Alex’s experience he may be right on that), but his argument on the looks and ‘feeling’ of twitter are less accurate, as many people use twihrl and other applications to post to and read Twitter anyway.

In time of mass Internet adoption, free product and capital flow, we came to believe that the world is small. The possibility of doing business with customers being thousands of kilometers away and instantly getting in touch with people we barely new 5 min ago creates an illusion of being in the same room with the whole world. Digg, Facebook, Twitter, ubiquitous blogs and e-commerce - it really makes The Global Village a fact. Actually, having a video call over Skype with my friend in the UK feels pretty much the same as actually inviting him to my place. And of course I can get to know pretty much everyone in the world in less than 6 steps. So the world is small after all.

Really?

Recently I discovered that commenting posts on blogs like Techcrunch or Scobleizer (an important part of socially-aware-web-individual’s daily activities) only makes sense if you can be one of the first 20 commenters. Then someone actually reads what you wrote. To be one of the first 20 you have to read the post pretty much right after it’s online. When it’s fresh. The other observation I made is that my Twitter feed dies about 12pm - I only use Twitter to track the bloggers I’m interested in, and they, well - go to bed around that time. On the other hand - it’s most active around 8-11pm, and that’s the time when I should go to bed.

The world today is not 3D (unfortunately). It’s 4D - time being it’s fourth dimension. And the web is making me more and more aware of it. Unless you, just like RTM inventors, have “Interesting sleeping patterns” it’s hard to keep up with Pete Cashmore or Louis Gray. And we of course do not want to drop dead because of our work or blogging. The problem is not as simple as ‘not being in Silicon Valley is not cool’ or that you need to drink beer with A-list bloggers to get some buzz about your company. It’s influencing every part of doing business over the web: PR, advertising, customer service, invoicing (was it this month or next already?) - creating problems everywhere. We can deal with them, maybe using Internet Time, but they’re still there for thousands of businesses and bloggers around the world. Anyone about to solve them all?

Now, I have decided to really immerse in all social trends on the web. That means I just got an account on… twitter(!). Ok, I know I’m a bit behind, but this is (kind of) my point. Do we (social web-apps developers) really have to use everything that is on top right now? Do we have to set up an account in the just-released-so-hot-new-service? Because it definitely takes more time than an average web-worker can afford.

The answer, as one of my university professors usually said, is probably same as always: It depends. For instance, in our team of 3, I’m the one responsible for (among making coffee, running with papers and other super-important stuff) marketing & PR (whoaa - do we need PR? - yes we do). That means reading tons of blog posts, twitts and other junk every day. But it’s supposed to be 2 way communication, if it’s to cause us any good, so I also have to get to know some people. And Twitter is one of the places I can stalk them (yea!) and communicate with them (haven’t figured that one out yet…). For instance, Robert Scoble is following me on twitter 9 minutes after I started following him - maybe if I shout loud enough he’ll hear me and mention us in one of his posts (no, I’m not naive enough to think it’ll work this way, it’s just a rhetorical figure).

The conclusion: I don’t know if Twitter will work for us, but as web entrepreneurs we have to BE on the social web, not JUST work there - if we want to be heard. And for me it means setting tons more of accounts and trying services I (sometimes) think are complete rubbish.

And BTW, you can follow me on Twitter HERE>>.

Update:

I also set up an account on Blip.pl, polish clone of Twitter. You can stalk me here.