My friend, analyst extraordinaire, Janet Asteroff, says Twitter is on the way out. Read more about what she says.  

Twitter's Limited Shelf Life by Janet Asteroff

"Ok chief marketing officers,  you may have to sit down. It won't be easy. Or, maybe it will, depending on your strategic agility.

"Twitter will be gone. Not tomorrow, not next year, but soon, and something will replace it. Microblogging will be here for a long time, but Twitter most likely won't. Twitter is wonderful but flawed. Liking it is easy but replacing it is inevitable. If you don't think so, then when's the last time you checked your MySpace account? Or GeoCities? Used 1997's best search engine Alta Vista? Or signed on to Prodigy?

"One of the better computer industry axioms is "nothing works until version 2.0". Twitter is microblogging version 1.0. And it will always be version 1.0 no matter how many technical iterations or user interface changes or third party applications happen. The next service will be the one to make more lasting waves by correcting Twitter's inherent downsides and providing a deeper usefulness for users and marketers. Twitter's a simple idea, a mix of IM, e-mail and interactive talk is what made it easy to use,  but that's exactly what makes it difficult to expand as a practical communications utility.

"Why can't Twitter recover, thrive and live forever? Well, there's always a chance it can re-invent itself, but what usually happens is that some enterprising group or start-up is at work on the next application which has the features marketers and consumers need. Twitter's founders and developers are locked into their technical platform and modes of operation.

"Think of Twitter as a funnel with a very wide top and an extremely  narrow bottom – much goes in, but it  takes forever to get out. Information can't be well organized because there's too much of it and no easy way to do it. It streams all day and all night and the signal-to-noise ratio is unacceptable. But whether using the Web interface or  tools like TweetDeck or Twidroyd,  the linear presentation is  difficult for interaction because  there are a) too many flows of communication b) moving too fast to c) enable people to easily connect with those interested in the same things. For marketing, getting the message read is hit-and-miss, but Twitter has the eyeballs, so marketers have to be there.

"Twitter has become, with some exception, a broadcast media. It's great for headlines, and almost a replacement for RSS in its "scan-and-go" format. On the Web, it's hard to use for anything but the basic read-and-post function; the Twitter BASICS instruction page contains more than 75 entries. This simple service has run away with itself in terms of complexity of use.

"As a broadcast media, those who do the best are churning out one-liners. Comedians like Steve Martin and Joan Rivers have short, effective communication which standalone.  Twitter works well for experts, pundits, groups and entertainers to reach a wide number of people.

"Don't confuse popularity with utility. Twitter is popular. The recent US Presidential Twitter event  was nice but not very successful. And on the back-end it's a data machine which produces trends by city, state, country, and demographics about  products and services.  But none of this means that Twitter has the function and utility needed for effective communication between groups, or for following opinion leaders or friends, or effectively embracing products, services and ideas.

"Some of what version 2.0 will need to make microblogging a potent marketing and communications conduit include:

-          A means by which to save communications you've missed, or to collect them, or put to the side and looked at later.

-          A  way to  easily resurrect the "conversation" on a topic, to keep better track of one subject or one group within a specific  timeframe, not just looking back at earlier postings.

-          Security beyond password protection for groups which want to keep in touch confidentially but don't have access to a private system

"This makes it more like the next generation computer conferencing system, but that's what version 2.0 may be.

"Facebook is version 2.0 of AOL, Prodigy and CompuServe. Google+ is  trying to be the better Facebook.  Google should have tried to create the new Twitter, because nothing works until version 2.0."

Read more Janet Asteroff  at  http://www.asteroff.com/