Disadvantages of using Twitter
If you’re still wondering whether you should join Twitter or another social network, you may be considering the pros and cons of each platform. In this article, we will highlight what are the disadvantages of Twitter.
The main disadvantage of Twitter is its confusing interface, especially if you are not a tech savvy person. In fact, Twitter is a microblogging site and therefore does not fit the convention of the traditional website or even other social media platforms. When you first sign up for Twitter, you might be wondering what to do next, like someone dropped you off in the middle of a war zone with no instructions other than “What’s on your mind?” Especially if your friend isn’t on Twitter, you’ll find the first few days on Twitter particularly lonely. While Twitter advises you to follow celebrities to begin with, you’ll often find that these celebrities don’t have time to reply to your tweet, so you might as well start engaging with “normal” people.
Once you start socializing with people, you’ll soon realize that Twitter is ruled by what I called the ‘dictatorship of followers’. In fact, Twitter users seem to compete with themselves (as humans often do in other contexts) over who has the most followers (and who follows the least), and thus people are often hesitant to follow you. One disadvantage of Twitter is that it is very much about appearances. It can be really frustrating when you’re at the bottom of the ladder and can’t seem to get any more followers – this causes many Twitter users to leave the platform when they realize they’ll never get more than 30 followers. .
Finally, the last disadvantage that Twitter has is its flow, which can be very confusing once you follow more than 100 people. In fact, at this point you won’t be able to track the stream in any meaningful way, and while Twitter clients allow you to organize your stream, I don’t see how you could monitor the 1000 people you’re following. And as your Twitter account grows, you’ll soon notice Twitter’s two biggest plagues, follower churn and spam. Follower churn is a technique used by so-called Twitter marketers to grow their Twitter account by following and unfollowing hundreds of people; and spam is all over Twitter, spreading affiliate links all over your Twitter stream. By my most conservative estimate, there are at least 5% fake accounts on Twitter (as I said, this is VERY conservative).
To conclude, in my opinion, Twitter has many disadvantages. First of all, the user interface is really confusing, especially when you are not too tech-savvy. Second, everyone on Twitter is dying to get more followers, and this creates a kind of unhealthy competition among Twitter users. Finally, you will find that when your account grows, it becomes impossible to monitor your Twitter feed due to the flood of tweets. Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide if there are enough benefits to justify signing up for Twitter.