Twitter Crisis? From Mission Critical to Love Child!
Is Union Square Venture backed Twitter at risk of bringing down the entire Web with it as a titters on its own unprofessional brink? NO! Twitter mania in the tech blogoshpere warns of such a grave outcome though.
Dave Winer–who believes Twitter is “mission-critical” to his communications–calls for a tech-wide sit down with investor Fred Wilson’s management team on par with global peace keeping talks: “The same way the President briefs Congress when there’s some kind of international crisis.”
Union Square Venture’s Fred Wilson–the unofficial Twitter blogger ombudsman–empathizes with Winer and rallies for “the father of blogging and RSS,” bonding with tales of respect for “children screwing up”:
Dave expresses the love he has for Twitter. Like the love that I have for my children. When they screw up, it bums me out and I help avoid making that mistake again.
Sweet? Wilson’s signature Web 2.0 analysis schtick relies on his teenage children for fodder. As usual though, his adolescent comparison falls flat.
After all, Twitter mistakes have been piling up, hence Winer’s love-hate affair.
Venture Beat on the dire situation, for the Web at large: “Twitter’s struggles harm nore than just the users”:
Twitter’s service have become a valuable part of many other start-ups and serves a complimentary role to some large services. Tweetmeme and Politweets are two start-ups that rely completely on Twitter for their services to work. FriendFeed meanwhile imports all users’ tweets into its activity streams. Likewise, Yahoo’s MyBlogLog also has Twitter integration as a main component of users’ profiles. Then of course there is Facebook where many users tie their status updates directly to their Twitter updates.
Poor Twitter piggy backers then? NO! If a business makes a decision to rely on a new, unproven free service for the delivery of its own services to its own customers, that business only has itself to blame.
Likewise for Twitter users. If Twitter was a fee-based service its “consumers” would have been long gone, demanding refunds for non-performance, and a rational market would drive Twitter to reliability or extinction..
The Web 2.0 free market, however, has an irrational decision making process of its own, along with its Web 2.0 non-paying users.
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