For how long will Twitter survive?
That is one major question to tackle. And the guys at TechCrunch are surely busy trying to give the best possible answer.
After all, they do have the staff and the inside information available for the job.
Wait a minute…what inside information?
According to Michael Arrington on July 14, 2009:
The guy (”Hacker Croll”) who claims to have accessed hundreds of confidential corporate and personal documents of Twitter and Twitter employees, is releasing those documents publicly and sent them to us earlier today. The zip file contained 310 documents, ranging from executive meeting notes, partner agreements and financial projections to the meal preferences, calendars and phone logs of various Twitter employees.
My personal favorite is this spreadsheet with cash flow and revenue analysis from Twitter, here’s a peak:
Earlier this April 2009, eMarketer calculated that Twitter would have 12.1 million US adult users in 2009 and 18.1 million in 2010.
The 18.1 million number for 2010 appears to be far smaller than the one from the confidential Twitter documents that TechCrunch claims to have in its power because they estimate the Twitter population at a 100 million. (Note: Twitter’s USA population represents about 40% of its total population.)
The Harvard School of Business points out another problem for Twitter, there is growth in quantity of users, not in quality. People are just not tweeting:
While some people find Twitter highly addictive (myself included), since Oprah, Ashton & Co. have joined in, everybody knows that soon Mom and Dad will be joining and Twitter could become…so 2009!….next year.
Maybe. Maybe not.