Kyle LeBoeuf

I made a comment this morning on Twitter about an article on Techcrunch on Twitter Search. Robin Wauters of Techcrunch makes comments on some of  the (ridiculously stupid) trending topics on Twitter Search. When Twitter Search debuted in its current form last year, it was deemed by many as one of best and quickest ways to get breaking news information, since normal, everyday people on the scene of a major event can tweet just like the journalists and the mass media.

As Robin points out, trends in Twitter Search are quickly becoming overtaken by corny internet chain-letter-style memes (Like “3 Words After Sex“). Some of you may wonder why this is such a big deal, but bear with me for a second.

Think back on when E-mail first started becoming popular (seems like forever and a day ago, but its not that far back). It was orginally seen as a way of communication between friends, family, co-workers or clients/customers. Fast forward 15 years or so later, and everyday I am emptying my inbox of corny, annoying chain latters that contain jokes, funny pictures and videos, or petitions for me to sign and pass on.

Lets look at another popular internet service: Facebook. When Facebook debuted, it quickly became popular among college students as a way to keep in touch in more interactive ways than just e-mail. It wasn’t over-crowded with your entire family (even your grandma), and it was easy to find your friends amongst the riff-raff. The interface was simple, straightforward, and it worked. Go figure. Fast forward a few years later, and guess what? Facebook is packed with all kinds of people, welcome (your classmates, old friends) and unwelcome (your mom, your boss). Not only is it packed with all kinds of people, there’s also companies who on Facebook that are always in your face about getting you to “become a fan” of their product, and they spam with you stuff. Also, as Facebook adds more features and changes things around, it begins to lose the simplicity that was one of the service’s biggest appeals back when it was the newest web trend on the block.

When a service breaks into the mainstream, companies usually try to change the service around to meet the needs of the mainstream user. Most of the popular websites of today (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.) have become a victim to this.

Twitter is already showing signs of this, removing some features that might actually be useful to some folks but may be too complicated for the mainstream attention the company is starting to gather.

Is breaking into the mainstream a bad thing? For the companies, not really. Mainstream attention can turn into a hefty profit, but it usually sucks for power users, because the services lose a lot of the funtionality that attracted attention in the first place.

My official designation for mainstream is Oprah. When Oprah joins your service, your doomed.

Kyle [at] kyleleboeuf.com