Having failed in my task, I returned my attention to his blog and does he have a treat for us this time? Well, that depends on how much you like reading the ramblings of someone who when faced with an idea he can't fully understand waits for its downfall, not quietly, but publicly predicting it.
You see, Bengo thinks Twitter's gonna die soon and it's all because it's too successful for it's own good. That's right. A large user base causes sites to fail, just look at the likes of MySpace and Facebook and how they crashed and burnt when their user base got too large.
Oh wait... scratch that and let's start again.
Here's Bengo's latest post, with a few additions of my own of course.
"Last year, News Corp. offered to buy Twitter for $500 million dollars, but was rebuffed. I think News Corp. dodged a bullet.
I cannot figure out a way for Twitter to overcome its inherent flaws. It suffers from mathematically provable problems that make it a candidate to be the next Pets.com. -Mathematically provable, huh? So do you have any of those formulas to share with us then?
A school of anthropological research concerns itself with efficient sizes of human groups. The most coherent groups, in which all members know the inter-relationships of all other members, are theoretically limited by the Dunbar Number, which equals about 150. History shows again and again that social units like agrarian villages and military units optimize near this level but not beyond it, at which point bureaucratic control impairs coherence. - Ah, because physical interaction between individuals linked by shared surroundings or employment can be compared to the interactions of individuals on the internet without any adaption for the differing methods of communication and interaction.
Twitter has two math problems. The first is that the incentive to gain followers pushes most players to try an gain audience share. - Really? Most people I follow just talk to their existing friends there, follow a few celebrities and tell their readers that they have one if they're interested. No big deal if they're not. I can't say I've seen MOST people try and inflate their numbers. - As audience size increases, the intimacy level decreases. We have a problem of dilution. Because Twitter users do not interconnect as a unit, a user can go well beyond the Dunbar number, but ultimately the same limiting principles kick in.
The second is that as each Twitter member receives more and more tweets, more go unread and unacknowledged. Twitter lost its usefulness to get a question answered about a year ago, - Your personal experience is not everybody's. Different people follow different numbers of people. There is no uniform amount. - and frivolity has replaced functionality. This is a problem of magnification. If everyone expands their tweet reach by a factor of ten, we are all overwhelmed by the number received. As institutions are advised by PR gurus to join Twitter and broadcast tweets, the number of mouths will exceed the number of ears. It's shouting into the darkness. - I follow the people who I care about. I do not care about 'institutions' and so do not follow them.
Some Twitter members have been invited to use a new feature, called Lists, to parse people into subgroups for purposes of prioritizing. This is a red flag. It suggests that Twitter's brain trust perceives the math undermining the model. It also smells of desperation: they don't know how to blunt the math problem, so they have subdivided it into numerous math problems, or more precisely, a sociopolitical math tangle. - Alternatively, this is called improving your product and finding new useful features that your customers can take advantage of. If a supermarket opens a clothing section, does it prove that they are failing to sell groceries and are on the verge of going under? Probably not.
Next comes the return of the anthropologists, who will observe that lists are more likely to be sorted by status than any other category. The result: hard feelings, cliques, and finding yourself on lists with titles like "kooks" or "people who talk about food too much." - Or "Webcomic People", "Family", "The (-insert sport of choice here-) Team" or "College Friends". You know, things like that. Lists do not have to be about importance and I don't know anyone on Twitter who does sort people that way. They can be used to simply make checking your updates manageable.
Efficiencies in social networking are illusory unless you can monopolize them. The din of everyone chatting away to hollow empires of followers is likely to yield to networks that offer precision and value over network size. - The purpose of my Twitter is to keep up to date with the people I care about and to keep up to date anyone who cares on my own status in life, or my failure to update a comics strip on time. The problem with Twitter is only a real problem if you want it to be something it isn't. It is not a primary tool in the promotion of comics. It's a way to talk to people, in groups and on a personal level. You can use it any way you like."
I would leave it there, but oh no, there's more!
Fire Cock - But in all seriousness how do you think that a more focused network would work, exactly? Do you think it not have to categorize its constituents into some sort of hierarchy? Alternately, could Twitees not prune their own subscriptions down?
ScratchinPost -Dude, why's yer site all, like, ugly?
Kez - Testing...testing...
Bengo - Thanks, Kez. It works.
The first three comments are from internet curiosity J. Shagam, aka "fluffy," who uses pretend and hijacked identities to add a dimension of emotional disturbance to our proceedings.
Moderation has been turned back on until she finds something better to do. You can find her on Twitter as fluffy, if you find the extra hassle she creates is worth bringing to her attention. I'd have to warn you it puts you at risk of stalking.
We've kept a perfect streak here on this blog: every single person who arrives with an agenda of making a nuisance of themselves is actually a webcomic artist, generally not well known. That's 4/4, and none of them were topics of criticism or even topics at all. Interesting.
As for the commenting problem, I guess something got tangled in the network and got fixed. :)
fluffy - I did not post any of those comments. This is the first comment I've even tried posting since you previously slandered me. I only even know about them because someone linked me to this page to let me know you were continuing to pull this crap.
Knock it off, Bengo.
I still have no idea why you think I'm behind this but IT. IS. NOT. ME.
I don't give a crap what you think about me at this point but I'd rather you not try to blame me for every single negative comment directed at you.
fluffy - Oh, and just to be perfectly clear: For the record, before your previous slander against me, the last comment I tried posting was this one back in June. After that point it became clear to me that you truly had no interest in anything I had to say, and so I stopped trying to post anything, like any sane, rational person would do.
I will repeat here what I said on my own comic site when I first learned about your accusations against me:
I'd just like to point out that between my full-time job, my comics, and my music and audio production projects, I barely have time to do all the things that I enjoy doing, so why would I spend every waking hour posting "dozens of missives, ranging from polite to deranged, from various genders, stolen identities, nationalities, etc.?" He doesn't even have the decency to provide a single shred of evidence, so I ask that you just apply some critical thinking. In short: I have not done any of what he is claiming, and I don't even know if anyone is doing what he's claiming.
This is the ONLY profile I have EVER used to comment on your blog. If you have proof otherwise, I urge you to share it, but in the meantime you are just spouting off a bunch of hot air.
Wait... The Webcomic List?
That would be these people right? Jeez, those people are mean, but you know, that oppernaR fellow must be telling the truth right, because all of the critics that Bengo faces are really the same person, aren't they?
You know, something fishy's going on here. Let's see... Ah, yes, I see. Fluffy starts a thread and all these 'people' start taking her side and some of them appear to be involved in this award thing of theirs. Suspicous huh?
Let's dig deeper. Let's see who the awards people really are. Hmm... don't know them.. don't know them... Brad Guigar? The Half-pixel guy? Half-pixel are in on this!? And what's this? Jessica Ottowell? Fluffy's fake account? She's in on it too!?
Oh my god, Bengo, you're right! It's all a conspiracy! They're out to get you Bengo! And they're all just one really big person! Run! Run! Run while you can!
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