"Twitter Needs to Become More Open or Die"

The article “Twitter Needs to Become More Open or Die”, tells the concern for the fate of Twitter if they continue to run a communications website that is centralized. Many people, now and days, like to update their lives online with Facebook, or Twitter. Both are very popular social networks, but they were not always that way. In the beginning, Twitter did not have too many followers, so people were able to easily access their accounts, but since it has become so large, there have been many issues that have arisen. Many people are complaining that Twitter needs to become decentralized and more open. However, the creators of Twitter were looking to build a business, and not an open, decentralized communications network.

With Twitter staying as it is, it will continually need to double the number of employees that it has in order to stay competitive on the web, and it will constantly need funding to upgrade the network. The article suggests that Twitter would be better off becoming more open now rather than later because they are only dragging out an inevitable process. There are too many other websites that are smaller versions of Twitter that could replace them if something were to happen it. Right now, even though Twitter is worried about the decentralization causing a lack of revenue to cover the upgrades, it is not inevitable.

In one opinion, I think that Twitter should remain how it is for now, as a central communication network, but in the long run, I think that Twitter needs to make a change. When the time comes, I think that they should start to transition to a decentralized and more open network, because it will be the thing to do. What Twitter has now is a central social network that anyone can use and that is not going to change over night because there are some people worried that they are not being open enough. For the time being, it works, but for how long? I know a lot of people that use Twitter, but I know they have developed a frustration with the problems Twitter has been experiencing.

I think that the best option for Twitter would be to decentralize and be more open. Twitter has other options if it is worried about losing revenue. If you think about it, they will continue to lose revenue if they have to keep doubling the number of employees they have and have to continually upgrade their system. This can be fixed by adding features to the core service. I feel that Twitter is worrying too much about the revenue side of the issue, when they should try to focus more on what the people think. In an article entitled “Does the World Need More Than One Twitter?” it explains that Twitter has been having some reliability issues, with a lot of outages. This is something that Twitter needs to address and fix before they lose their followers.

In the end, it is up to Twitter whether or not they want to continue to operate their system as a central network, but they have to think about the future of their business, and if they want to keep having these reliability issues. I feel that the best solution would be to decentralize, so that things do not get worse for them in the future.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2010/tc20100916_301428_page_2.htm

http://gigaom.com/2010/06/15/does-the-world-need-more-than-one-twitter/

http://gigaom.com/2010/06/17/what-would-a-more-open-twitter-look-like/