Twitter Is the New CB Radio

What would you think of a Twitter conference that asks you—in an e-mail—to retweet (meaning to repeat something on Twitter) the following?

'The Cool Twitter Conferences World Tour' Eighth Stop – New York City Series of one-day Twitter conferences continues in New York City on Thursday, August 27th at The Playwright Tavern located at 202 West 49th Street, New York, NY, 10019"

Notice anything non-retweetable here? Yup, this item is 98 characters over Twitter's 140-character limit, making it an invalid post. I'm sure I'll learn a lot from these guys, right?

While they're making themselves subject to ridicule, they do bring up an interesting issue, at least for me: When is the Twitter phenomenon going to end? Now there are seminars about it? Why?

Twitter is in the popular lexicon now, as celebrities on talk shows often throw it into their conversations. "Yes, I started Tweeting or Twittering this week. It's fun!"

DOOMSDAY SCENARIO

When the Twitter phenomenon began to emerge a couple years ago—back when 500 followers was a lot for someone to have— that the scene could crumble once a real celebrity like Britney Spears came on board. A number of celebrities did come on board near the end of last year, and brought with them many of their fans.

Now there are some celebrities with a few million followers. Comics, actors, and TV personalities use the system mostly for self-promotion. It's becoming a conduit for the press agent of the past.

This should have broken Twitter, but it hasn't, yet. But it's hard to imagine the system sustaining much more of a load, especially since the recent denial-of-service attack aimed at Twitter has brought the service down a lot lately.

CB RADIO FAIL

My thinking is that Twitter could become the CB radio of this generation. Every so often, something comes on the scene that becomes so popular that it collapses from the weight of its own success. And after it collapses, nobody really misses it, but it lingers on as a curiosity. CB radio is still on the market and still used by individuals and corporations for genuine point-to-point communications. But as a societal common place, it's dead. At one point, songs were written about it and the modern computer chat-room began on CompuServe as a "CB-simulator."

Over the last decade, I've been searching for a new CB-radio phenomenon, as have most columnists who follow technology. One guy, who will remain nameless, suggested it was the Internet itself. Ha. The current candidates in my book are MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. MySpace never received the same kind of talk-show hype that Twitter has. Facebook and Twitter are the best candidates, and Twitter, to me, comes the closest to CB radio because it built up tremendous buzz and popularity so fast.

CB radio failed for a number of reasons not the least of which were A-holes buying illegal transmitters that would drown out everyone else within miles of their transmissions. Twitter seems immune to this sort of thing; you pick whom you want to follow, so when someone begins to send out spam or banalities, you simply drop them off your list. You can also nicely block people you never want to hear from, or those who you do not want to read your posts. You can even set up a private password-protected channel for personal non-public use. These safeguards make it harder to find the breaking point for the system.

OVERLOAD

One possibility is the overhead of deadwood. According to some research, 60 percent of all Twitter accounts are dead. This has already added up to millions of dead accounts. With a retention rate of only 40 percent, the system is going to simply clog up with deadwood. And since the growth rate is at least 100 percent a month, at some point it can never become profitable. They could shut down tomorrow and nobody would blame them.

A BETTER TWITTER

Then there is the "better idea" threat. Although numerous attempts have been made to build a better Twitter, nobody has managed to make it happen. Most of the things that have come along were better in some way, but not better enough. The fact is, though, that sooner or later something better and trendier always comes along to usurp the old concept. Always. But what?

IMPROVEMENTS KILL PRODUCTS

The death of CB radio kind of showed up in an odd way. It just died with a collective "oh well" coming from the chorus. It was weird. Some blamed it on the "improvement" to the system with the advent of the single-side-band (SSB) technology that made the whole system more functional. This sort of thing could happen to Twitter too. They improve the service somehow and at the same time kill it because of the improvements. The improvement will somehow ruin the experience or have some other unintended consequences the way SSB may have destroyed CB radio.

Twitter may not be the CB radio of this era, but it sure looks like it could be. Either way, you should follow me at http://twitter.com/therealdvorak, just in case. Why take a chance?