Comments on: The Australian: Twitter will fail because it doesn’t create communities like newspapers do

By: Jacqueline Yeo

Jacqueline Yeo — Fri, 29 May 2009 02:31:39 +0000

Social networks will never replace broadcasters, print, online media or wires, and this goes both ways.

Twitter does have communities, in fact it has quite a lot of communities in various forms. Some accounting for over 1 million followers.

On the other hand a traditional print newspaper company can hardly claim to have a community if it cannot extend itself online for others with similar interests or views on certain topics to add comments to articles or share viewpoints with other readers.

Extension of it’s content or brand online goes beyond just Twitter, there’s Facebook, Search Engines, Digg, RSS Feeds which together enable traditional media to take advantage of Web 2.0 technologies to extend the life of their product and news content to create a viral effect and reach out to different audiences, groups and communities.

By: Pat Cusack

Pat Cusack — Mon, 25 May 2009 12:22:07 +0000

News have quite a stable of online properties.
I don’t think The Australian is one of their stand-out traffic factories.

It’s silly to say print hates online, although some people in ink probably do?
Twitter is so alive with spam – it’s hard to say what the signal is good for.

Someone will create #stations and it will become CB radio for teenagers and t33rrorists. Who knows what any of it will do?

I doubt it will disappear.

By: Dan Brian

Dan Brian — Wed, 20 May 2009 13:16:04 +0000

Jeff Jarvis wrote a great book called What Would Google Do? which explained precisely this type of Newspaper elitism that will spell the demise of those who don’t adapt. Twitter has it’s growing pains (see my blog) but the USA numbers prove the simplicity and immediacy of it’s platform will ensure it endures. You’re right Gary Google aren’t going to let Twitter get away with it just like Ebay bought Paypal these companies are smart enough to see when they’ve been outsmarted.

By: Wolfie Rankin

Wolfie Rankin — Thu, 14 May 2009 02:27:08 +0000

I’ve made actual friends from online communities, especially from Secondlife, Who I’ve then met in real life.

Friends have visited me from interstate and overseas and we’ve had a great time, and it could happen with twitter too, I can see how twitter is really useful for bringing people together.

People continue to attempt to make the internet look like a big joke, where “losers with no lives” hang out… but of course you all remember that it wasn’t long ago that a lot of people didn’t want to be caught dead with one of those mobile phones *sneer* mobile phone users were mocked wherever they went as complete tossers.

My experience with Secondlife is that people who aren’t savvy with it will put it down and say people should go outside and meet people, but you can’t always meet your friends in your area, at any time you please, it’s simply not possible.

The reality for us was that people who were seriously ill, or who lived in remote locations were using secondlife as a means of keeping in touch with the community. I’ve met many who have revealed personal stories of heart operations, traffic accidents or cancer… which I’ve had myself and have recovered from.

Let me just count up how many friends I have made from my many years of reading newspapers…. er….. well gee…. none.

Wolfie!

By: William Felt

William Felt — Sun, 10 May 2009 23:50:17 +0000

How very sad for you ‘Australian Twit’. And I think that if there were no newspapers around the world BILLIONS of people around the world would lament the fact – far more than the Twitter et al ‘audience’. And at least the Courier Mail serves SOME purpose. Second Life anyone?

By: Australian Twit

Australian Twit — Sun, 10 May 2009 23:44:02 +0000

Ha hahaha haha HAHAHAHA!!!
Journalists are funny.
Lacking content to create communities???
Myself and millions would cry harder if we lost twitter, youtube and facebook than any paper – although the Australian is probably worth more tears than that Courier Mail trash that I line my birdcages with.

By: Isaac

Isaac — Fri, 08 May 2009 02:25:24 +0000

Pozlit, because all the journalists working for traditional newspapers will just go off and find other careers, rather than moving to fresher ventures which will still be aggregated, right?

By: Twitter will fail because it doesn’t create communities like newspapers do? « Mandygriffiths’s Blog

Wed, 06 May 2009 09:14:29 +0000

[...] The Australian has predicted that social networking site Twitter will fail despite the current buzz around it. Mumbrella reports [...]

By: Pozlit

Pozlit — Wed, 06 May 2009 02:59:15 +0000

Before you all get too carried away dancing on the graves of the newspapers, has anyone else noticed that the triumph of the aggregated content machines will be somewhat hollow if there’s no content to aggregate. (apart from, god help us, “user generated”- surely the scariest two words since “self assembly”)

By: John Grono

John Grono — Tue, 05 May 2009 08:31:24 +0000

Mike, totally agree that sales are down, as is ad revenue – they are undeniable facts. But in my opinion newspapers without debt still have life in them !

Looking at the Sun, it has around 3m copies sold a day and 8m readers a day. Yes, that is a day! (And highest sales was just under 4.9m back in 1995 when they cut the cover price to 10p for the day). At a 30p cover price I’ll call that near enough to 1m GBP a day – not too bad cash-flow for a dying dinosaur. A just a little perspective on the 28m visits a month to their website (an impressive figure) , that is not a ‘people-based’ figure but (probably) ‘unique cookies’ – an unduplicated figure over a month and one of the more meaningless metrics devised.

By: alexander

alexander — Tue, 05 May 2009 05:40:41 +0000

John – and UK newspaper sales down some 12% over the past three years? The Sun sale down while its website is up to 28mn visits/month?

Twitter is dead! The Internet won’t affect us! The readers will always fly to quality!

Quality. The invariable last word of the disintermediated just before the darkness claims them…

By: John Grono

John Grono — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:40:16 +0000

Mike. Just to clarify something re US newspapers (which are definitely in a world of hurt). The majority of US newspapers are still making an operating profit. What is cruelling them is interest payments. You have the situation where real-estate moguls like Sam Zell paid way over the odds for The Tribune Group thus crippling the business that he has been steadily stripping in order to service that debt. The primary problem in their business model is escalating debt which greatly overshadows their declines in classified revenue (which has been partly offset by their increases in online advertising and subscription revenue). The local newspapers are not crippled with over-leveraged debt and are in a much healthier position to concentrate on ‘monetising’ their on-line businesses.

By: Mike Andrew

Mike Andrew — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:10:32 +0000

Newspapers are dying, so get a life. Look at the US model where newspapers are having to get on line to survive. With classified ad revenue down by 60% sice 2006, who are you kidding.

By: Kris

Kris — Fri, 01 May 2009 09:13:46 +0000

I agree. Twitter will not survive because the contacts created are not really important to users personally. Facebook has implemented the T-idea nicely on their new facelift, but Twitter needs to do something fast in order to survive. Maybe something with LinkedIn might work! But,…in the meantime,…Tweet me: http://twitter.com/KrisOlin

By: Zac Martin

Zac Martin — Fri, 01 May 2009 07:26:29 +0000

I think Anonymous 3:25pm summed it up best with “LOL”.