Twitter = Google-Killer?
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 didnÂt 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 [...]