There’s an interesting article on Slate.com about the dangers of having one company – Twitter – dominate the microblogging world.
Citing last week’s hacker attack that crippled Twitter, Farhad Manjoo argues that Twitter is far too centralized. This not only makes it vulnerable to attacks and outages but puts an increasingly critical communications medium at risk for millions of people.
Manjoo suggests that a decentralized ecosystem be introduced – something people such as Dave Winer have been advocating for a long time.
Another market consideration is the emergence of alternatives to Twitter. Sure, there’s Yammer, Plurk and Present.ly but they’re small players whose market share is a fraction of Twitter’s. As well, Yammer and Present.ly are focused on the enterprise market – a market that Twitter has happily ignored.
So even if Twitter is attacked by hackers, and goes down for hours or days, there’s really no where for people to go if they want to jump on to another microblogging service.
You would think that entrepreneurs – and venture capitalists – would be all over this opportunity to take a competitive swipe at Twitter.
I mean, there’s no lack of start-ups trying to go head-to-head with Google, and the browser market has pretty vibrant competition Heck, Marc Andressessen is backing a new browser start-up called RockMelt.
So, where are the start-ups willing to take on Twitter? Did the demise of Pownce eliminate the only viable contender and, in the process, convince people that Twitter is invincible?
What do you think? Is there another microblogging service that has what it takes to be an alternative to Twitter?
Where’s the Competition for Twitter?
There’s an interesting article on Slate.com about the dangers of having one company – Twitter – dominate the microblogging world.
Citing last week’s hacker attack that crippled Twitter, Farhad Manjoo argues that Twitter is far too centralized. This not only makes it vulnerable to attacks and outages but puts an increasingly critical communications medium at risk for millions of people.
Manjoo suggests that a decentralized ecosystem be introduced – something people such as Dave Winer have been advocating for a long time.
Another market consideration is the emergence of alternatives to Twitter. Sure, there’s Yammer, Plurk and Present.ly but they’re small players whose market share is a fraction of Twitter’s. As well, Yammer and Present.ly are focused on the enterprise market – a market that Twitter has happily ignored.
So even if Twitter is attacked by hackers, and goes down for hours or days, there’s really no where for people to go if they want to jump on to another microblogging service.
You would think that entrepreneurs – and venture capitalists – would be all over this opportunity to take a competitive swipe at Twitter.
I mean, there’s no lack of start-ups trying to go head-to-head with Google, and the browser market has pretty vibrant competition Heck, Marc Andressessen is backing a new browser start-up called RockMelt.
So, where are the start-ups willing to take on Twitter? Did the demise of Pownce eliminate the only viable contender and, in the process, convince people that Twitter is invincible?
What do you think? Is there another microblogging service that has what it takes to be an alternative to Twitter?