Has Twitter peaked as Google prepares its attack?

Is this the elephant in the room? Are Twitters days numbered? The new social media service from Google, Google+, must pose a serious threat to Twitter, why? read on.

I know Google+ is in its infancy but already it’s positioning itself as a serious player.  So why should Twitter be worried?  In the last few weeks Google+ says it already has 21 million users and it’s not even open to businesses yet.

After 5 years and a LOT of hype Twitter is still a fairly small player and as yet hasn’t found a way to monetise itself. Last year advertising revenues were $45 million with just 600 advertisers according to CEO Dick Costola, less that $0.25 a user. When I say Twitter is small it has 200+ million, but back in April less than 21 million were classed as active users by Twitters own criteria.

To put this in context, Facebook has 600 million active users (700 million+ registered) in the same period of time.

Millions of users signed up and used Twitter for a while, many got bored.  Twitter appeals to pundits, celebs, politicians and their followers, bloggers, and business/brands engaging with their fans.  Twitter also requires some knowledge of its micro blogging terminology and an understanding of # tags and messaging.

But most importantly from my perspective many more business people already have a Google account and understand how this works.  Adding Google+ will be easy and the interface is familiar therefore I think the business take up of Google+ once businesses are allowed, will be far higher than Twitter.

IN CONCLUSION

Today Twitter is a far better announcement platform than Google+ and allows anonymity and no real requirement for engagement. For fast news and skim reading there is nothing better.  But as Google+ matures and apps and add-ons become available, Twitter will find is hard to keep its market share.

BUT BEWARE

If you put all your eggs in the Google basket please take precautions.  I have 12 services set up in my Google account.  If I lost this it would be a catastrophe.   So apply the usual precautions.  Ideally don’t use it as your main email address. Make sure your password is very secure, ideally 10 alpha numeric with a symbol or two.  Just type “locked out of google” for some horror stories.  PCPro Magazine did a great article on page 7 of this months edition if you get a copy, very scary.