Why Twitter will never be Facebook

Twitter's growth has stalled. Many believed it to be the scrappy up-and-comer that was going to put all other 'complicated' social sites to shame, but in fact it serves a very specific purpose for a very specific audience.

I don't think it's because twitter is about to imminently fail or anything like that, but I think that the world-wide market for a service like twitter is simply not as large as something like Facebook.

Twitter has a purpose, and my take on it is that Twitter will remain as a site showing the pulse of the real-time web, and will continue to generate trends like popular links, #hashtags, etc, but all for niche usage.  Even though Google has incorporated real-time search into many of their results, the relevancy of a comment from a stranger, versus Google's time-test algorithm as far as finding what's right for me

just doesn't seem to be up to par.

Here's my prediction:  They have lots of VC money, so they're not going anywhere.  They will continue to evolve, and (for brands anyway) will end up being just another customer service channel.  "You want to complain to us?  Well, we're listening on Twitter."  Do I see e-commerce happening through twitter? Nope.  What about enhanced services like video or even photo sharing?  Only through third-parties like TwitPic, or YouTube... not on the site itself. Will brands pay for 'Premium' accounts?  There had better be some enhanced value as part of that... 

The place that Twitter can continue to dominate is making trends and real-time search relevant.  That's what something like (even Facebook) has yet to master, because people do not spend all day on Facebook updating their status-- yet from the beginning, that was the (mobile) point of Twitter; answering those questions like "What are you doing?"

Would I recommend future clients use Twitter as part of a corporate social media strategy?  Yes.  Why? Because that's where people are, and that's what people are talking about.  If this was 2006, I would be recommending a MySpace Page, because that's what everyone was doing.  That's the point:  It's emerging technology marketing, and the trick is to be nimble enough to market to people

.