Two theories on why Twitter is not growing as fast as it used to

May 1, 2014 John Obeto

For the second quarter in a row, Twitter has disappointed me, and The Street, with slowing growth, and worse yet, increasing user disengagement.

Personally, I was not that surprised at that.

I believe there are two distinct reasons for this

1. The lack of a vibrant Twitter client ecosystem

This might surprise a lot of folks, but there has not been a vibrant 3^rd-party Twitter client ecosystem for quite a while now.

In order to capture more eyeballs, Twitter bought up just about all the larger Twitter client ISVs, shuttered or ignored them, and tried driving everyone else to official Twitter apps.

As if that was not enough, Twitter came up with a convoluted app token scheme that had a 100,000 token limit, thereby limiting the upside for Twitter client app ISVs.

Meanwhile, the official Twitter apps are, well, shitty!

That does not help.

2. Twitter’s 140-character limit is now quite limiting

In plain English, I believe the strict 140-character limitation needs to be rethought, as it currently unnecessarily limits conversations.

There isn’t any conversation flow mode.

Well, except if you go to Twitter web.

There’s no way to add to a thought longer than 140-chars, and most Twitter clients do not have APIs exposed that allow mobile clients to show it.

That limitation stops, or at least stifles conversations.

For engaged users such as myself, this is frustrating. For others, it may have driven them away.

While I, to quote that imbecile Herman Cain, “don’t have any [scientific] facts [or data] to back that up”, I know what stops me from engaging more on Twitter, and I have to believe that since I am not an outlier, others must feel the same way.

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