Monday, December 15, 2008

Is Twitter becoming Facebook

As Twitter grows and becomes more mainstream, it must appeal to those outside of the Social Media fishbowl. Four recent entrants appear to be doing just that.

Last week, we saw the debut of the Shorty Awards. According to the website, The Shorty Awards honor the world’s top Twitterers in categories as diverse as startups, design, business, sports and just plain weird. Clearly, the next “competition for the self-obsessed” Twittergraders. In terms of competition, there is the Tweetwasters, an admittedly useless site that will calculate how much time you waste on Twitter based on the number of tweets that you have posted. There is even a hall of fame!

And today, TwitorFit debuts. No, it’s not a site that helps you shed those 5 pounds you gained at the holiday parties, this is Hot or Not on Twitter as described by TechCrunch. The Twits (low scores) and Fits (high scores) are sure to take over in popularity. Once you join, Twitorfit will send a tweet to your followers asking them to vote for you. As David Petherick says in his blog,The Next Web, Twitorfit “is puerile, silly, and quite useless. But I love it”. There is even a blog badge for you to proudly show your score.

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And last but not least, there is the OldSayingGame which also debuted this morning. OldSayingGame will tweet half of an obscure old saying every day. Then you send a DM of a witty statement to complete it. Then invite your friends to vote. Win votes to prove that you are the cleverest Tweeter!

Are these new games an indication that Twitter has jumped the shark? Or is it just another way to let off some steam as part of a busy day? And will we soon see Facebook’s Ninjas, Packrat, and Snowball throwing on Twitter? What do you think will be the next big Twitter game?

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4 comments:

Unknown said...

I think it's just proof Warren, that not everyone on Twitter is (a) a social media consultant plugging a blog or (b) a Get-Rich-Quick scammer plugging an e-commerce-site-masquerading as a blog.

In fact, there are those who use it for idle chatter and that's likely to be the next wave to hit.

Ditto Facebook: it's not strictly a networking device. Plenty of people use it as plaything and things like Snowballs and Zombies are the main reason they go there.

Warren said...

@awolk I think the diversity is good as the Twitter social media fishbowl expands. It will be interesting to see how mainstream Twitter really becomes and how soon.

Anonymous said...

As long as these applications exist outside of twitter.com, let them innovate and flourish.

I dread the day when Twitter, Inc. emulates Facebook (as LinkedIn is doing) to bring in outside developers into their service.

Warren said...

Ari, I definitely see more of the general apps coming and I think some will be even more popular on Twitter. I think games like Chess and Scrabble could be more popular than comparable versions on Facebook.