Twitter = Google-Killer?

02/9
2009

That's what these two posts from yesterday seem to be saying. And two weeks ago David Pogue of the NY Times posted The Twitter Experiment:

"Yesterday, I spoke at a conference in Las Vegas. The topic was Web 2.0, with all of its free-speech, global-collaboration ramifications. At one point, I figured that the best way to explain Twitter was to demonstrate it, live, on the big screen at the front of the ballroom. So I flipped out of PowerPoint and typed this to my Twitter followers: 'I need a cure for hiccups… RIGHT NOW! Help?' I hit Enter. I told the audience that we would start getting replies in 15 seconds, but it didn’t even take that long."

David went on to list a sample of the answers, then observed:

"Has there ever been a wittier, smarter bunch (or a better collection of hiccup cures)? The audience and I were marveling and laughing at the same time. This was it: harnessing the power of the Web, the collective wisdom of strangers, in real time! The Twitterers of the world did not let us down. (And yes, I realize that this demo might not be as effective if you have, say, 20 followers instead of hundreds.)"

I dunno. I'm not a big fan of the whole wisdom of crowds thing. Here's an example from Yahoo Answers that I like to use in class: How come there are Liberty Bell Symbols on some street signs in Philadelphia? The answer given by Lolabell is wrong. It's been voted "best" -- by one person. And it ranks as the #1 hit in a Google query for "street signs" "liberty bell".  (Here's the correct answer.)

I'd rather wait and get 1 correct answer than be instantly bombarded by a lot of junk. But maybe that's the  old cranky librarian in me speaking.

I can see Twitter stealing some market share from Google -- something Yahoo and Microsoft will never do. But replacing Google? Not likely.

Comments

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Twitter is much more than a

Twitter is much more than a Google-killer, in my view. All social networks currently are based on a lovely notion of equality and balance. Need, desire and want are driven by disequilibrium. Enter Twitter. I can follow you — or you can follow me. But there is no requirement or need to reciprocate. The value creation in the Twitter network results from not reciprocating. This is why I see Twitter as having the fundamentals of an economy, not merely the feel-good community qualities of all other social networks.

More on this here:

http://www.unboundedition.com/content/view/10984/54/

[...] similar to Facebook in,

[...] similar to Facebook in, say, 2006 or Google in 2004. I even blogged about them becoming the “Google Killer” yesterday. So I think I’m gonna give you a break from Twitter for the rest of the [...]