Here are 10 reasons why Twitter is most likely going to fail in the next few years:

1. Lack of Use

None of my friends tweet, preferring instead to use Facebook. When I see that I’m one of the few teenagers using Twitter, in a technologically adept school, it makes me realize just how unpopular Twitter is in our age group. Maybe it’s more popular in different demographics? While searching I came across a report on Mashable showing that only 21% of Twitter users are active. Not only that, 34% of the total amount of users have never even tweeted, while a whopping 73% have tweeted less than 10 times. It begs the question: who really does use Twitter?

2. Poor Revenues

Twitter only recently came up with a way to make money, Promoted Tweets. The system allows advertisers to display promoted tweets in search results and timelines.

The problem is that this revenue system could only work as long as Twitter users are very active. However, as previously stated, only a small percentage of users are active. In other words, this revenue system will be highly ineffective as Twitter slows down.

3. Loss of Interest

Novelty factor was a big portion of Twitter’s success. The incredible growth rate proved just that. As the novelty of Twitter wears out, less and less people are going to stick with it.

4. Bots and Spam

One of my biggest problems with Twitter has been spam. 24% of tweets have been created by “spammy” bots. When I look at my Twitter account, it seems that almost 90% of my timeline is filled with spam. Why would anyone want to continue using a service with that much junk mail?

5. Competition

One word, Facebook. Facebook is the social media behemoth of today and possibly tomorrow. As long as Facebook stays that way, Twitter will never take its place.

6. 3rd Parties

Twitter is too simple and requires too many third party services in order to do anything clever. This has led to the growth of Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, TwitterCounter, Twitter Karma, TweepML and so many other services. This is asking too much of users and most users will not want to do this.

7. The Next Fad

As with most social media networks, competition will take users elsewhere. Even Facebook may be replaced one day, just as Myspace was. It may happen sooner rather than later with Twitter due to lack of interest and loss of users.

8. Fail Whale

I keep thinking, I’m going to have make an oath that I’ll quit Twitter if I see the Fail Whale one more time. For those of you that don’t know what I’m referring to, the Fail Whale is the image that shows up when Twitter is down. About every other time I visit Twitter, the site is down.

9. Lack of Purpose

Honestly, do you understand what Twitter is about? I don’t at all and highly doubt that I’m alone. That same Mashable’s report actually dealt with this issue. 87% of Americans are aware of Twitter but only 7% use it, which shows that a huge number of people don’t understand it.

10. Security Issues

There are potentially major security risks associated with Twitter and as those risks become exploited over time, the brand will become less and less appealing to most people. Recently, major figures have had their accounts hacked, and spammers continually make Twitter unsafe.

Read what entrepreneurs are saying

Follow successful entrepreneurs and pay attention to what they are saying. Check out what they share, like blog posts, articles, books, and other information. You’ll find valuable learning resources in the tweets shared by entrepreneurs as well as their links. Here are a few lists of entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter: altgate, Twibes, Listorious, TweepML.

Keep an ear to the ground for opportunities

Twitter can help you find out about opportunities for learning and growing as an entrepreneur before anyone else. Pay attention to Twitter to be among the first to know about webinars, partnerships, networking events, and other opportunities that can open doors to learning and developing as an entrepreneur.

Expose yourself to inspiration

Twitter is a great place to get inspired to do great things. Follow people that are doing something exciting in business, and you’ll find yourself inspired to make something happen yourself.

Read news

You can use Twitter as a news source to find out about events and happenings as they come about. You’ll also be able to use Twitter to learn about websites and conferences, so you’re always in the loop.

Find a mentor

Use Twitter to find a mentor that can help you in your entrepreneurial journey. Follow entrepreneurs and businesspeople that you look up to, and start relationships with them to find the perfect mentor for you.

Network

In addition to finding a mentor, you can find helpful contacts as well. Connect with people who can help you learn more about becoming a successful entrepreneur.

Participate in chats

The Twitter community features regularly scheduled chats that are great for entrepreneurs. Check out tags for whatever you’re interested in, like #sba or #smallbusiness, to find out how to get in.

Take notes

Use Twitter to write down ideas and concepts you want to explore. You can also ask questions to your followers, and get insight from the entrepreneurial community.

With the help of Twitter and its users, you can get a healthy entrepreneurial education. Pay attention, interact, and be a part of the community to learn everything you can about entrepreneurship from Twitter.

Please share your thoughts, ideas and suggestions.

Here are the downsides of Twitter’s newly designed home page:

Overall

The new homepage doesn’t stand out enough like the last one, has no main focus, is too dynamic, and doesn’t focus enough on recurring users.

Top Tweets

Just like the last home page in which Justin Bieber was some how always the most trended topic, the top tweets are still only about Bieber. Also it’s too dynamic combined with the trending topics which makes the home page confusing.

Trending Topics

The “Trending Topics” along with the “Top Tweets” which rotate in two different directions could easily confuse someone on Twitter for the first time. Not only that, when you mouse over a topic, a pointless black bubble pops up with absolutely no purpose.

New to Twitter

The “New to Twitter” capsule seems to scream out that it should be placed at the same height as “Top Tweets”, it simply looks out of place. The focus on new users is way more apparent on this home page as opposed to the last one, in which there was merely a large yellow sign up button. I though preferred the last design’s sign up button because it was clean and didn’t use too much of Twitter’s valuable home page.

Sign In

The first time I visited the new home page it took me three minutes to locate the sign in button. Yes it’s the same style and placement but now it blends in to the background and is crunched up behind the “New to Twitter.”

Are you a fan of Twitter’s newly designed home page? Or not?

This is a guest post I wrote for Inspired Magazine. To see it there, click here.

Actually this post is not about Twitter and Facebook but a valuable lesson in search engine optimization (SEO).  While I don’t profess to be an SEO expert, and I don’t typically blog about it, this is an interesting story based on simple observations.

A few months ago, I wrote a post about eBay, 10 Reasons Why eBay Sucks for Sellers because of my frustrations with the site. Today, I am still getting a steady amount of search engine traffic from visitors googling “ebays sucks”. It is is actually my number one keyword driving 100 visits per month because my site comes out on the first page for that search.

Here’s some data from Google Analytics:

How did I manage to get ranked so highly for “eBay sucks”?

I benefit from the fact that there is limited competition on those keywords because large blogs such as TechCrunch, Mashable, Huffington Post etc. can’t publish a post saying that any company — eBay, Facebook, Twitter — sucks. There are many reasons they can’t do that such as legal, strategic and branding.

Do people search XYZ sucks?

Of course, people are always frustrated with sites like eBay, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, CNN, Friendfeed, LinkedIn and more. And a lot of people search with terms that come to their mind.

Here’s a screenshot from Google’s Keyword tool showing the number of monthly searches for “eBay sucks”, “Facebook sucks” and “Twitter sucks.”

What’s my point?

First, let me emphasize that I don’t recommend that anyone write a post stating that XYZ  sucks for the sake of SEO traffic. At the end of the day, the honesty of the content is what builds a loyal readership. Without that visitors won’t come back.

However, if optimizing your post for SEO is important to you, it makes sense to use casual language that people use in their day-to-day conversations. And because big blogs don’t have the ability to do so,  you should take advantage.

We’ll see if I get traffic in the next few weeks from searches on: Twitter sucks, Facebook sucks…

What are your thoughts? Since this post seems to be creating a lot of controversy let’s hear!

The simple answer to this is as follows, this is how much money I try to make with social networking:

$0.00

You might see this and think, what? But it’s true, when it comes to social networking sites I try to make zero dollars. You cannot approach social networking trying to make money directly from your contacts. In fact, if you try to do so you will come across as “spammy” and a jerk.

Social networking is the doorway to your product/business/blog/website. Use social networking to form relationships with these new contacts and through your interactions you will find like minded individuals with similar goals as you. When you find people with similar mindsets, or needs that you can satisfy, then you can take the relationship to the next level.

There is something special about Twitter that no other social media system has yet captured. It is the brevity and simplicity of Twitter that really makes it work. It is fast, easy to use and you can get responses from people instantly. It is possible to meet people on Twitter that you would never have a chance to meet in real life and converse with them. I have tweeted with TV personalities, politicians, business people and sports stars. Twitter opens up new opportunities as well as providing fun for all.

In order to get the most from your tweets these are my 7 tips.

1. Use Social Chit Chat. Answer the Twitter question “What are you doing?” In addition take an interest in what other people are doing. Don’t try and sell a product or shout at people from the rooftops. Simply interact in the same manner that you might do at a social gathering where you are getting to know people for the first time or catch up on news with those that you have met before. Be friendly and show a genuine interest in people that you chat with. Be a good listener as well as say things about yourself. There is no need to get too personal in the details that you give out in fact it is wise to be security conscious.
2. Share. When you find interesting items that you can tweet or re-tweet do so. Place a web link so that people can easily  find the point that you found interesting. Share photos using Twitpic, share videos through Vidly, share files through FileTwt, share popular links through Tweetmeme. You may just tweet a positive thought, one of life’s sayings, a happy or sad moment or describe something interesting you have just seen. Whatever interesting thing it is share it.
3. Answer Questions & Help People. Be willing to give your help and support when you can to fellow tweeters. You will gain a reputation as someone to follow and will build trust in the Twitter Sphere.You can show yourself to be an expert in a particular field of knowledge as well as a decent person to follow. There are also great directories for you to add yourself: We Follow, or Twibes.
4. Be Committed. You must really want to interact with people and use Twitter to the full. You will not be successful if you are half hearted.
5. Be Consistent. You should schedule time each day to send tweets and to reply to messages sent to you. This could be 10 or 15 minutes or several hours, the choice is yours but whatever you do be consistent. Don’t have gaps of days or weeks between tweeting. If you are really very busy simply spend a minute or two on those days that you are very busy rather than do nothing at all. You can even tweet saying that you are very busy and will reply to messages very soon.
6. Be Interesting. Make tweets that others will find interesting. You will not be able to appeal to every single follower but by having a variety of tweets that are interesting you will find that followers will stick with you even if some of the tweets you make are not specifically of interest to them. Plus make your background appealing: TwitBacks or Twitter Backgrounds Gallery.
7. Be Interested in Others. Twitter is all about interaction. Show a genuine interest in others. Read as many tweets as your time allows and respond where you can. It could be a note of congratulations for something they have achieved or ask how they are following an illness. Re-tweeting also shows that you appreciated something they wrote and this all engenders mutual respect.

When you follow these tips you will find that you will build a rapport with many people and will start to see good results from the work that you put in. Let me know if you have anything to add or feedback, enjoy!

Twitterers:

1. Twitter spammer
The worst of all: the Twitter spammer. I can’t tolerate those twitter bots and spammers that will send out twits, and even replies with annoying messages like these: “@entrepreneurpro You can get 100 followers a day using http://yumurl.com/p74ZY6.” I don’t want to spammed constantly with similar scams!

2. The twitless twitterer
Then there are those twitterers who don’t twit at all but have followers. They shouldn’t be able to take up the precious twitter vanity links. And the people that follow them clearly don’t help either by supporting these wasters.

3. Celebrity twit
No matter how many millions of followers celebrities have I don’t want to follow them. I don’t care what their PR firm has to tell me. And I think that it’s sad that people like Britney Spears, Shaquille O’Neill and many others have millions of followers. For all we know there’s a much more interesting twitterer out there with only 10 followers.

4. Auto DM’er
I think that we could all agree that those people who send auto direct messages after you follow them are very annoying. For God’s sake I have 4,328 unread direct messages! The links to their sites, mafia invitations, and spam are all incredibly annoying that I don’t ever look at my messages any more.

5. Self Promoter
This may sound a little hypocritical because I find that promoting through twitter is very valuable. But I know that some people dislike it when people constantly promote blogs, sites and products on Twitter.

Facebookers:

6. Over Facebooker
Every time I go on Facebook I’ll see the same 30 people online in my chat window. Without a doubt they spend way too much time on Facebook and it shows. You’ll see them commenting, liking, posting everywhere and way too much.

7. Stalker
Yes there are stalkers on Facebook. They could be your friends or some random person. They’ll send you strange messages, constantly look at your profile, or even just comment way too much on your Facebook. This is why I wish that there was a real way to see who’s looked at your profile like on LinkedIn.

8. Facebook link’er
Basically like a self promoter on twitter, these people will post links on your wall or groups in order to promote themselves. Once is fine, but repeatedly doing this is just spam.

9. Friending abuser
As I mentioned in a previous post, those people who add too many people really don’t have that many friends in real life. Friending constantly is plain annoying.

10. Never ending inviter
I can’t take those people who will invite you to random events, groups and stupid apps. Such as:
“Howdy friend! How’d you like to be neighbors? Come join me in FarmVille, where you can grow delicious fruits and vegetables on your very own farm!”
Or
“Extreme Makover: Vending Machine Edition
Sunday, November 8th, 12:00am at…
You have been invited by …”
I’m not interested in growing my own farm on Facebook, or redesigning a vending machine!

What are your thoughts? Any suggestions, disagreements?

Looks like society as a whole is better on the “new social brandscape” side. So I’ll be seeing you on that side.

If Sites were People

Facebook teen:

I’m a teen. I have Facebook. All of my friends have Facebook. Sadly today to be considered a normal, “social” teen, Facebook is a must.

Twitter yapper:

This one is slightly ironic because most kids yet alone teenagers don’t even use Twitter. I like though how you can see this annoying kid talking away like everyone does on Twitter.

MySpace musician:

MySpace is going down the drain; I never really understood it or liked it. The last supporters of MySpace are definitely the musicians though, portrayed perfectly in the photo.

Wikipedia nerd:

The Wikipedia nerd was also very nicely done. Wikipedia, a site based on never-ending information seems fitting for a geek.

Deviantart artist:

I’ve never used Deviantart but I visited the site and this artist definitely looks like she would fit it.

Youtube prankster:

Youtube could have had a lot of different people but the artist decided to stick with the prankster, gangster idea. Personally I love the flipping off idea, it’s very fitting to YouTube.

Google engineer:

My favorite one here is Google. First of all, he’s bigger than all the others, just like Google is on the internet. Second, he’s looking down on everyone else because he seems to be above everyone’s level. And three he looks like a genius just like Google…

Please feel free to share your thoughts and opinions!

Does this mean that you can’t use Twitter to do business?

Twitter is still relatively new and like all new things it will take time to settle down and for users to really get a good understanding of what Twitter can and can’t do.

One of the things that Twitter is very good at is enabling you to build a relationship with your followers. This can be by posting small snippets of information about you and your business with links to interesting posts on your blog or other websites. When I post links I often track them using http://bit.ly and I can see how many people click on the link. One of my websites http://www.wiltshireway.co.uk contains a business directory for businesses in the county of Wiltshire, England. I can usually guarantee that 20 or 30 clicks will take place when I tweet a link within a few minutes of the tweet being sent.

However you can’t keep tweeting a link every few seconds as people lose interest and therefore it is best to be selective about the things you tweet and don’t try to directly sell your services too often. Find interesting news items or re-tweet others tweets that are interesting. The idea is to create a following of people that like what you do.

My main business is that as a  Mortgage Broker here in the UK (http://www.rolandmillward.co.uk) and I find that using the advanced features of Twitter Search I can find people who are tweeting about mortgages, buying a house and so on. (http://search.twitter.com). For example recently I gained a lead because a man asked a question about home mortgages on Twitter. I found his tweet in advanced search and sent him the answer. This has resulted in a note being made to contact him when his mortgage deal needs to be changed and he would like me to help him.

I find too that you can build good business contacts using Twitter as a networking tool. This is probably far easier than trying to sell someone something. I am at the start of a Joint Venture primarily because we met using Twitter. Coincidentally I have been asked to write this article by being contacted through Twitter!

I believe that being successful with Twitter is only part of your overall business strategy and that quite some effort and patience is required to build a good rapport with your followers so that you will eventually be able to do business with them. Always keep in mind that this is social media and the emphasis needs to be on the word social. Socialize and you will begin to reap the rewards of your tweeting.