Microblogging service Twitter is to become a “ghost town” due to the emergence of Google’s new social network, Google+.
That’s according to Mike Elgan, an expert writing for Computer World, who believes the service has been rendered “obsolete.”
He also said the firm had failed to capitalise on its “five-year window of opportunity to innovate its way to indispensability.”
Elgan’s bold damning of the service came as a surprise, especially as Twitter apparently boasts a huge amount of social media content. In fact, some 200 million users post 350 billion tweets per day, digitalsmind.com revealed.
However, this is where Elgan found a problem – only 85 million accounts had one or more followers. He said: “You’re not really a ‘user’ if you’re not using the service,” he said.
Furthermore, Google+ recently hit the 20 million users mark, which could be a problem for Twitter, said Elgan. In essence, the number of users Google+ has gained in three weeks is equal to the number of active users Twitter has gained in five years. The site hasn’t even gone public yet
Elgan elaborated further: “Twitter is extraordinarily vulnerable, especially since Google+ users are exactly the same kinds of people who will want to use Google+: Pundits, celebrities, business owners, bloggers and people involved in politics.
“In addition, Google+ will appeal to the kinds of users turned off by Twitter: teens, Facebook refugees, and the masses of people who don’t want to learn Twitter’s unique slang and command codes,” he added.
