Okay, so Twitter may have more than a few months to live, but it's not going to be around for much longer the way I see it for one simple reason. It's not because of all the issues with security that have been all over the digital news lately. It's not because there's something better. It's not even because someone's going to buy Twitter. Twitter has a terminal disease and nothing really can save it. The disease? Spam.
No one can question the explosive growth of Twitter. The number of new users has grown 1,448% in the past year, but has slowed recently.That's amazing by any standards. Equally amazing, though not in a positive way, is the fact that 60% of new users stop using Twitter after their first visit. When you take those two facts together, you quickly realize that Twitter is headed in the wrong direction. It can't keep growing at the same pace for much longer and without its current users sticking around, it will soon disappear. That's one problem.
The second problem is even bigger. Let's be sure, I find Twitter to be really valuable. You all know the reasons why, so I won't go through them here. But I also find Twitter really annoying. Why? Spam. I'm gradually watching Twitter go from a useful tool that early tech adopters were using to something a bit more mainstream (as celebrities jumped on board) to eventually a wasteland filled with the same few spam pitches. Just look at the public timeline and you'll see it...more and more each day.
The problem with this spam is that in the eyes of the spammer, it works. They measure success the same way a lot of Twitter users do, by the number of followers they can amass. Nevermind that the people that follow spammers are more likely to be spammers themselves. Nevermind that they might not ever sell a single get rich quick scheme. It doesn't matter. They can create a thousand accounts with a ton of followers and get a few numskulls to buy what they are selling. The cost to the spammer? Zero. The effort required by the spammer? Also zero. Spamming over email is hard. You have to steal email addresses or get people to opt into dubious sounding programs or guess at proper address formats. That takes "work." But, Twitter...oh, Twitter...it's easy to spam. You can get thousands of people to "opt-in" to your program really quickly. All they need to do is follow you. For most people, if you follow them, they'll follow you. Another target. No effort required.
It used to take a lot work to get followers. People used to follow you because you had good stuff to share. Now more and more people follow you because they hope you'll follow them back. The purpose of Twitter was never a race to a certain number of followers nor an ego booster that allowed you to boast how many people are big fans of yours. It's purpose is short, simple communication with a purpose. That's starting to die and with it Twitter dies.
Getting followers is ridiculously simple. Because of this, spammers keep doing it. Then they do it again...and again...and again. They may have thousands of accounts. It would take less than a day if you really wanted to have that many. When others see them adding followers, they're encouraged to do the same. Automated tools make it simple to follow, unfollow, refollow and everything else you need to find a bunch of followers.
I hear from so many people that it's hard to get followers. And, they're right...sort of. It's hard to get legitimate followers who care about what you have to say. But...
Fact: it is absurdly simple to get followers if all you care about is a number. Anyone can get 1,000 followers in less than a day and half. This isn't a pitch for my "Power Twitter" system. You don't need that. There are a couple easy things that you can do and in under 5 minutes worth of work (including registering), you can have your 1,000 followers in a day and a half. Skeptical? Feel free to set a wager and I'll take whatever it is. For the purpose of this article, I created an account just to see how many followers I could get and how quickly: 1,000 followers in 27 hours and now it's over 2,416 (5 days after starting) with 5 minutes total work. That's 2,416 followers who don't care about me, but also 2,416 potential spam targets. No violations of Twitter rules, just using what they allow.
But who cares? These followers don't. They don't care about what I have to say. They only followed me because I followed them. This group of followers has no value to me. It doesn't really have value to a spammer either, but spammers don't care. They just need a number.
As more and more people realize that it's simple to get followers and spam them, they will. You'll see more of the three types of Twitter spam: follower creation scams, make money for nothing scams, and steal your stuff scams. All pretty self-explanatory. All killing Twitter.
Can Twitter be saved? Yes, but you have to get rid of the spammers. How do you do that? Simple. Make it harder for them to get to a critical mass of followers. Twitter can just drastically cut the number of people you can follow in a day from 1,000 to 20. Do you really need to add more than that in a day? While you're at it, eliminate the whole follower scorecard altogether. What's the point of it? It's there just to impress your friends. The "importance" of someone on Twitter shouldn't be determined by a number, but rather by what they say. That was supposed to be the point of Twitter, so let's get back to that before it dies.
Someone has to do something before I finally fall for one of these spam scams.
Jonathan Richman is the author of Dose of Digital, a blog about e-marketing in healthcare. He works at Bridge Worldwide as Director of Business Development. You can follow him on Twitter (@jonmrich), but please don't if you're a spammer.
