This week, the launch of projeqt offers hope for a platform that does it all and then some. Dubbed a “creative storytelling platform,” it’s Tumblr meets Slideshare meets Cargo Collective — only a more flexible Tumblr, a sleeker Slideshare and spanning more media than Cargo Collective. And if this isn’t enough of a treat, it’s also device-agnostic — built entirely in HTML5 for cross-platform compatibility and specifically optimized for iPad and iPhone, projeqt is part publishing CMS, part portfolio-builder, part something else entirely.

Projeqt CMS Tutorial from projeqt on Vimeo.

After downloading Flipboard you enter your Twitter and Facebook details into separate streams, and those streams are then turned into “magazines,” — and they do, indeed look just like magazines. The attractive print-style layouts present you with pages of recent tweets, articles (pulled from the links in the tweets of those you follow), and the opportunity to respond from right within the app itself. What’s not to love?

Well, it’s got its limitations. First off — it’s not primarily a communication tool, in that while you can respond, you don’t see any of the peripheral information that is available on Twitter: people who respond to you that you don’t follow, for instance, are nowhere to be found, leaving the app to present Twitter as something of a closed circuit. Additionally, any re-tweets using Twitter’s official Retweet function are not here, either. Beyond that, anything you want to do within Twitter beyond reply — such as view a profile or follow a new person — loads you into Safari. In this way, the integration experiences reminds us of the Kin’s clunky realizations of Facebook and Twitter… and that’s not a good thing.

Of course, Flipboard isn’t a Twitter app, so our complaints are relatively picky. As a social magazine, what it presents is a little uneven as well. Beyond saying over and over how attractive it is (love the font choices!), I can say that many images render extremely poorly because Twitter functions on small, low quality images and any resizing up causes our eyes to bleed. Moreover, because it turns each link tweeted into an article on a “page,” we noticed how often many of the people we follow tweet the same link, the same story, the same meme… and Flipboard seems to deal with that by simply skipping over duplicated links — a fine strategy, we get what you’re going for, but because the application also filters out any text tweeted with the link, the “conversations” suddenly seem pretty broken to us. On top of that, as of now, it’s having some serious issues displaying certain blogs — we’re seeing tags and meta data exposed all over the place in a way that makes, well, reading, a little difficult.

Flipboard, rather unsurprisingly, is awash in Web 2.0-ness, and as such, many have noted its failure to expose author attribution in a way that’s helpful or accurate… instead, we get to see who “shared” the item, which looks and feels pretty misleading, and it’s something we wouldn’t be surprised to see evolve or change as the app develops. In fact, in the app’s provided FlipTech feed, you get semi-proper attribution — TechCrunch articles appear under the “TechCrunch” name, but I can’t tell if the article was written by MG Siegler or Michael Arrington — a distinction that may not matter to some, but certainly will to plenty. Finally, the app can be terribly slow to load, and it doesn’t update or refresh fast enough to suit the most avid social networkers. Of the two iPads I worked with in testing, one of them has still failed to load in any account information because of server overload, and the other is running at least 15 minutes behind Twitter’s actual timeline, though it seems to have an easier time staying on top of Facebook.

Now, I like many people, use Twitter primarily as a working tool (plus for joking around and talking about food), and Facebook as a family and friends tool, so their respective “magazines” have incredibly different character (I’m not screenshotting any of the Facebook stream because it looks exactly the same as the shots I’ve presented here, and because I really doubt most of the people I went to third grade with want to be on Engadget). While I’d say that, overall, my Twitter magazine is more interesting than the Facebook magazine, it’s also far, far more repetitive — but maybe that’s just because my circle of people I follow is rather small and insulated. There are other bugs I’m assuming will be worked out — such as the fact noted above that in my check, not nearly every Tweet was represented, they update extremely slowly, and they are not always presented in the order that they actually appeared — all issues that are very problematic for a social conversation tool. And, last but not least, this morning when I loaded up the app for the first time in twelve hours, everything from yesterday has ceased to exist, and was replaced by a new “magazine” — roughly three pages of tweets from the last two or three hours. So, 
if I wanted to look through anything older, well, as far as I can tell, I’m out of luck.

Which leads me to the question… who is this going to be useful for? It’s an interesting idea, of course, but who follows enough people on Twitter to make this application truly entertaining? I follow almost 200 people, and have almost 2,000 followers — so this application allows me to interact with far less people than I do on a normal basis, i.e., just those nearly 200 that I follow. Like I said, that’s not going to be a drawback for everyone, but it will be for some (such as myself). Don’t get me wrong — Flipboard has a lot of potential to be an engaging and powerful new way to look at our social media. It just doesn’t have enough meat to keep me interested yet. For now, it’s just like that subscription to Vogue I got a few years back: it seemed like a great idea at the time, but turned out to be suspiciously lacking in content in actuality. Hey, at least this one doesn’t take up as much space!

At Per­sonal Democ­racy Forum last month I got a chance to sit down for a few min­utes with Deanna Zandt, who spoke on the main stage min­utes before­hand. Her new book, Share This! How You Will Change the World with Social Net­work­ing, just came out.

“Empa­thy is the build­ing block for any kind of social change,” she says in the inter­view. “It’s lead­ing us away from apa­thy and isolation.”

While the new social tools are empow­er­ing, she called on peo­ple to go fur­ther and to “rearrange power rela­tion­ships” and to “dis­man­tle hier­ar­chies.” That can be achieved, Zandt said, through

“three easy tasks”:

1. to be authen­tic by shar­ing pieces of ourselves;
2. to diver­sify and cross-pollinate across bar­ri­ers. For instance, tech con­fer­ence speak­ers are gen­er­ally white and male. “I want to chal­lenge peo­ple to find peo­ple who don’t think like them or talk like them.”
3. to take that empa­thy and put your­self in oth­ers’ shoes.

From Here Book:

As social media becomes increas­ingly present in our every­day lives, a major demo­c­ra­tic cul­tural shift is under­way. Through the power of rela­tion­ships, shar­ing of expe­ri­ences, and orga­niz­ing online, pre­vi­ously mar­gin­al­ized voices are pour­ing into and shap­ing pub­lic con­ver­sa­tions like never before.

But seri­ous change will not hap­pen on its own. Despite the increas­ing pres­ence of a diver­sity of voices and faces, the Inter­net isn’t ful­fill­ing its dis­rup­tive poten­tial; more often than not, it’s sim­ply repli­cat­ing and ampli­fy­ing inequal­ity and seg­re­ga­tion. The good news? The fun­da­men­tal build­ing block com­mon to every social move­ment is the power of the nar­ra­tive. Your story… and your will­ing­ness to share oth­ers’ sto­ries with your net­works… can mean the dif­fer­ence between pro­gres­sive change and per­pet­u­at­ing the sta­tus quo. We need you here, build­ing and map­ping your rela­tion­ships, shar­ing your expe­ri­ence and cre­at­ing pipelines of empa­thy and trust that will change the world.

This book is a blue­print for under­stand­ing why and how this medium of exchange works, and how our per­sonal sto­ries and daily expe­ri­ences com­prise a pro­foundly polit­i­cal pic­ture that leads to social action and social change.

iPhone owners will argue until their dying breath how good the Apple handset is, Android users pushing the flexibility of Google’s operating system. Some swear by WebOS or Windows Mobile, even so, all of these OS’es have their own limitations which continue to frustrate even the most die-hard users.

There is no such thing as the perfect mobile operating system but with all software products there could always be improvements. What would be included in your perfect mobile operating system? We will discuss this below.

Customization

A huge prerequisite for any mobile owner. The ability to switch wallpapers whenever you feel like, change a theme or assign different ringtones to your contacts, it gives the user a feeling of control, they have power over the phone – not what Apple or Google tell them they can and can’t do.

iPhone owners have long wished for a way to personalize their devices and Apple relented to a point with the introduction of iOS4. Now, iPhone owners can apply a lock-screen and background wallpaper – insane. This is much to the delight of Android users, if the OS can’t perform the specified task, you can bank on there being an app available on the Android Market that can.

WebOS, Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Android all support theming, with iPhone users needing to jailbreak (and invalidate their warranty) if they wish to do so. Apple believe that the application of themes would “take away from the user experience” because it “spent a lot of time and effort developing this distinct and innovative way to seamlessly deliver core functionality of the iPhone.” Enough said.

Most support widgets – little home screen apps that update to display real-time information – the best you get on an iPhone is the date and time, perhaps a push notification from time to time.

The perfect OS would allow users to customize the UI of their phone, handing back control to the person who showed faith in the company by handing over hundreds of dollars/pounds/euros to buy its phone in the first place.

Built-in Social

Whilst most modern mobile operating systems make use of social features, none of them store social networking data so that other apps can access it. Confused, let me explain.

Say hello to Android or WebOS. Both of these operating systems allow you to specify your social-networking or email accounts to populate contact information or display information by way of a widget. This is great, but if you wanted to pull this information for a different purpose, you would be unable to – you would need a specific app to give you the functionality you wished for.

There is a mobile operating system that allows developers to pull social networking data specified by the user: Samsung’s Bada platform. Designed specifically to challenge the likes of Android and iOS4, Bada is a linux-based OS that has a built-in social layer – currently supporting Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Myspace (Samsung has already announced it plans to add in more social API’s) – meaning a potential app developer can access profile data without having to make a separate connection to the service itself.

This in essence, allows the user to enter their social network credentials once and then specify what apps can access it. Bada will also update your location data to Samsung’s servers, developers will be to grab your location without having to build in a system within an app to manually search for your current location.

The perfect OS would seamlessly integrate social services with the platforms PIM implementation, reducing the need for the hundreds of Twitter app developers to code their own implementation to complete exactly the same task.

Toggle Between Basic and Expert Modes

Mobile operating systems deal with app crashes differently. On an iPhone, if the app crashes, you simply get chucked back to the home screen.

On Android, if an app quits unexpectedly, you get a funny little error message asking you to try again and force close the app. For me, this helps me identify why the app is misbehaving, for first-time users this might be a little bit daunting and give the impression the phone is doing something it shouldn’t (when in fact it is educating the user).

The perfect OS would allow the user to switch between an expert mode that contains all of the network information like Carrier APN’s, firmware and debugging tools, to a basic mode which makes use of wizards or graphics to explain the functions on a phone.

Making The OS Self Aware

No, I don’t want your Motorola Droid to start killing in the name of Skynet.

Most modern smartphones have issues with battery management, gone are the days of a 4-day charge, it’s now become the 4 hour charge (OK, I am overstating that a tad). Tell me if I am wrong (I’m sure you would anyway) but I don’t think many modern mobile operating systems have an intelligent system to automatically adjust settings on the phone to maximise battery life.

I know you can get apps, for example JuiceDefender on Android, that sit in the background and disabling your phones data connection when its not in use, only to switch data back on once in an allotted time period to give your apps a chance to refresh its data.

The function could automatically prioritize the needs of the background apps running on the phone, dedicating resources to each app when it needed it the most.

For me, the perfect OS would have built-in controls that could intelligently monitor your phones’ use and change settings accordingly. Would be a great way to help improve battery life and allow your phone to get to know you a bit better!

Multitasking

Something that both Android and WebOS does superbly, multitasking is still not a standard feature on modern mobile operating systems. Although implemented in iOS4, full multitasking and notifications still haven’t been created to meet most user expectations.

Windows Phone 7 will launch without full multitasking support, limiting the function to official Microsoft apps and stopping any third-party developers from utilizing it.

A large percentage of smartphones are launching with a 1GHz processor and 512MB RAM, for a phone this is a huge amount of power and memory. The excuse that the phone physically couldn’t handle a large amount of apps at the same time doesn’t hold any weight now.

The perfect OS would allow users to run as many apps as they like and cycle through them if they should choose, in the mobile age it should be a right not a privilege.

Conclusion

It was very tempting to include network coverage issues (looking at you Apple) but the above issues would go a long way towards making a mobile operating system work for both heavy and light mobile users. The great thing is we are able to receive a fair number of official updates as well as those developed by the mobile hacking community, an solution to our needs is never far away.

What features would go towards making up your perfect operating system, let us know in the comments.

Today, we’re on the cusp of the Android 2.2 OS update, codenamed “Froyo,” which promises to make Android devices ever faster and more powerful. We’re also hearing whispers of the next generation of Android OS, known only by its Gingerbread codename. So, as a tribute and a quick overview of what Android has accomplished, where it came from, and what’s still to come, we’d like to present you with our “Evolution of Android: Follow The Gingerbread Road(map).”

We won’t touch on every feature below, but all versions will have a decent overview.

Android 1.5 : Cupcake
With the introduction of Android 1.5, we started to hear the name “Cupcake” floating around in reference to the first Android OS software update. The update gave the Android OS a little more polish in some areas, but some of the biggest features of the update were certainly the introduction of the (still bad) on-screen keyboard, as well as widgets. Yes, copy and paste within the browser, video-recording, and then being able to upload to YouTube directly were big deals, but a lot of the upgrades were features you may not use every day, where widgets and the on-screen keyboard likely would be used every day.

Widgets have been available in other mobile operating systems, like Samsung’s TouchWiz, but none were as compelling as Android’s implementation. Sure, it took quite a while for a decent selection of widgets to become available, or for developers to start bundling widgets with their apps, but they eventually caught on. Honestly, widgets are one of the great differentiators for Android.

Widgets provide a good amount of “surface” or “at a glance” information, without the need to launch an app. Sometimes you don’t necessarily need the full functionality of an application to get the tiniest bit of information. For example, the weather widget tells you the high and low temperature of the day, with the current temperature at the moment, and if you need any more from that, just tap the widget to open up the weather app itself. Also with all the ways to customize Android devices, widgets may indeed be on of the biggest appeals, just look at HTC Sense.
Screenshot of the Android Market in Android 1.6 Donut OSAndroid 1.6 : Donut

Android 1.6 : Donut
Then came Android 1.6, also known as Donut. Donut was a small update, but it packed a punch with a revamped search box, camera and gallery application, and a completely refreshed Android Market. The search bar, which was initially intended just for searching the web, now allowed a user to search many other places within the device, like bookmarks, contacts, applications, and more, right from the home screen.

The update to the Android Market would probably be the most noticeable change with Donut, as it was now had a white and green color scheme to it, opposed to the black and gray look of previous versions. The new market was also a little more user-friendly, breaking up applications by paid, free, and “just in.” The new version of the Android Market also supported screenshots of a selected application, which was a much requested feature. Still, the Android Market as it stands today needs some fixing. Application discoverability is still atrocious, but I expect to see some big changes later on with the Market.

The Camera application also saw a revamp, and while it wasn’t the prettiest, it was still a step up from what we were working with previously. Users could easily toggle from the camera to video recording without leaving the app, and the settings were now hidden on the left side of the screen under a slide-out side menu bar. According to the Android Developer site, the Camera application launched 39% faster, and the shot-to-shot time was improved by 28%. The overall look of the revamped camera application wasn’t exactly its strongest aspect.

The only thing unfortunate about the Android 1.6 update? Not many devices actually received it. Devices like the Droid Eris or Hero jumped straight from Android 1.5 to Android 2.1. Donut was a nice, small upgrade, and is still used by about a quarter of all Android users, but that’s as far as it went.
Screenshot of Google Maps Navigation turn-by-turn GPS navigation serviceAndroid 2.0 : Eclair

Android 2.0 Eclair
Android 2.0 : Eclair was a very nice step in the operating system’s evolution. Debuting on the Motorola Droid in November of 09?, this was the second major iteration of the platform and represented the point where Android began gaining the attention of the masses. Thanks to new features, along side Verizon’s relentless marketing campaign, as well as some viral videos, Android OS became a household name.

Eclair allowed Android to flex its “social” muscle. Applications were able to sync with contacts from Facebook, and later on, Twitter, allowing you to have all your contacts from every single social network in onc place. Pictures of a contact were pulled from a social network, allowing virtually no blank pictures for your contacts, as long as they were a part of a particular network. Eclair also brought us the Quick Contact menu, allowing you to tap on a contact’s photo and a menu would slide in, showing all forms of communication with said contact. Eclair also polished the UI, bringing in some slick transitions and overall spit-shine that was much needed at the time.

Eclair didn’t stop there. Android 2.0 brought us a handful of new camera features, such as digital zoom, scene mode, white balance, color effects, and macro focus. We’d have to wait until Froyo for the camera application to be polished up enough to give us the enjoyable experience we have today, but Eclair did make some big updates to the camera app.

Android’s virtual keyboard was also improved with multitouch support, a better dictionary that learned common words, as well as suggestions for contact names. Still, the stock Android keyboard needed a lot of tooling around to be a comfortable typing method.

The Android browser also saw an upgrade, which refined the overall look. Double-tap to zoom was added into the browser so users would not have to rely solely on the plus and minus buttons on the bottom of the screen. The bookmarks view was also altered to support thumbnails, and the browser gained HTML5 support.

Oh, and the biggest update with Android 2.0 was the Google Maps Navigation turn-by-turn GPS navigation service that Google was nice enough to offer for free. That single launch brought Garmin’s stock price down 16%, and Tom Tom’s stock down 21% on the day of the announcement.
Screenshot of Cool Iris 3D gallery in Android 2.1 Eclair updateAndroid 2.1

Android 2.1
Android 2.1 OS represented the second stage of Eclair’s evolution with the introduction of the Nexus One. Android 2.1 brought with it one of the slickest iterations of the Android homescreen ever seen. Android 2.1 is an extension of 2.0, and is still very much Eclair, but with just a little more flare.

Live Wallpapers were introduced into this version of the operating system, which were simply animated, and interactive wallpapers. They may provide little purpose, but were definitely something we’d never seen on an OS, and are just plain fun. Android 2.1 also gave us 5 home screens to work with, instead of the standard 3 we were used to prior to 2.1.

In addition to the extra home screens, the 2.1 update gave you a different way to navigate through your home screens. Dots align either side of the app drawer launcher button, to tell you which screen you were on, and long pressing these dots would give you a thumbnail view of all home screens at the bottom. Somewhere in the middle of iOS and WebOS, as well as somewhere in between “pretty cool looking” and “useless.” Helpful nonetheless.

The Nexus One was also the first handset that extended the existing voice search capabilities found on previous versions of Android by giving a user the option to translate speech into text in any text entry field. A microphone button was added to the keyboard, allowing you to speak instead of typing for emails, texts, search, and pretty much anything else you’d need to type.

Android 2.1 also brought in some cool 3D effects into the OS. The application launcher was replaced with an app launcher icon. Instead of a tab you drag up to reveal your applications, you simply tapped on the app launcher and your applications would fly in from all corners, and scrolling through them produced a 3D “waterfall” effect.

The photo gallery also saw a major 3D revamp. CoolIris helped Google develop the new gallery, and it’s one of the nicest built-in applications for the OS to date. If only they did the same for the Music player…

Still Eclair here, folks, but we’ll make this one quick. Not even a month after the release of the Nexus One, Google pushed out an update to the device. This update was probably the smallest of them all, but packed one of the biggest punches.

Android 2.1 – update 1 (Multi-touch)
This update added multitouch functionality across the board on the Nexus One, save for applications like Gmail. Maps, Gallery, and the Browser now supported the much sought-after feature that iPhone users have had since day one. Multitouch on Android works perfectly well, and is one of the most welcomed additions to the platform.

The update also added Google Goggles into the list of pre-installed applications, and Google Maps was updated to version 3.4, which added some nice extras.

Last but not least, the update made an attempt at fixing the 3G connection problem that had plagued the device for some time. While some people saw some improvements, many did not. Google and T-Mobile have since given up on finding a solution. Hey, at least they were honest.

Android 2.2 : Froyo

Google’s most recent update, Android 2.2 Froyo has stepped up its game in so many fronts, it’s hard to even consider the best of the “competing” OS’s out there actual competition to Froyo. While the iOS 4 has an overall polish and is more intuitive, Froyo pretty much destroys it on all arenas. We won’t go too in-depth with this version, as we’ve covered Froyo in-depth here. But here is an overview of Android’s newest dessert.

Froyo gives users a massive speed increase, thanks to the JIT compiler, and the Java V8 engine. With the JIT compiler, applications will launch quicker, and the overall OS will just be that much snappier. The Java V8 engine, which you can find on Google’s desktop browser, makes the Android web experience the fastest in all the land.

Froyo makes the best of your data connection, and can turn your phone into a mobile hotspot. This feature may not make it to any other phone than the Nexus One, since wireless carriers would rather you pay a premium for that feature.

A feature that people have been waiting for for years in now a reality in Android 2.2. Support for Adobe Flash. Once a device has been updated to Froyo, the Flash player can be found in the Android Market, and performs quite well. Despite Steve Jobs’ utter hatred for the technology, Adobe and Google have proved that the rich media technology can run on a mobile phone, and run pretty damn well at that.

Other features include the option to move applications to handsets’ microSD card, a slightly tweaked home screen look, new widgets, more photo gallery enhancements, a handful of Exchange features, as well as the cloud-to-device API that allows you to send web pages and Google Maps directions from your computer to your phone.
Graphic of Gingerbread Android robot, made by IntoMobileAndroid 3.0 : Gingerbread

Android 3.0 : Gingerbread
With Froyo only available on the Nexus One at the moment, people are already clamoring about what features Android 3.0 Gingerbread may hold for us. We don’t have much solid information to go on at this point, but there are quite a few features that we can expect.

Google Music : Google may get into the music business with Gingerbread, with plans to take on iTunes directly. We might just see Google selling music directly through the Android Market, or downloaded from the as of yet unseen web-portal and sent through Google’s servers to your device. But that’s not all. Google will likely allow the user to stream their computer’s music library over the air to their handsets as well. You can do this now with an application, HomePipe, but Google’s official solution will likely be much better. Google is getting more media-savvy, and the introduction of Google Music should not come as a surprise to anyone. With the introduction of more music services, we can expect a new look to the media player as well.

Online Android Market : In addition to music being streamed from your computer to your handset, Google demonstrated at the Google I/O 2010 conference that users will soon be able to download an application from the desktop version of the Android Market website, and send it straight to your phone without touching it at all. Taking advantage of the already in-place Cloud-to-Device API, this would make browsing for apps a faster and easier experience.

User Interface Overhaul: One of the biggest rumors is that Android will experience a complete UI revamp, and it will likely be taking notes from Android 2.1?s Gallery application. So we’re talking 3D Android here. Snatching up one of Palm’s WebOS designer’s, who will likely lead the design team, will likely aid in the process, and we can’t wait to see what they come up with.

Google Sync: Another rumor that’s surfaced is that there will be an official way to sync your Android device to your PC. If you haven’t realized who Google is gunning for, you probably haven’t actually read this. DoubleTwist, your days are numbered.

There will likely be hardware recommendations to support Gingerbread, not minimum requirements as we’d previously heard. Gingerbread will also be the beginning of a great division between high-end and low-end Android handsets. Gingerbread will obviously be for the higher-end devices, while lower-end devices, if they can make it, will stick with Froyo.

There are a few more rumors swimming out there, but the rumors above will likely come true. That said, most of these things are still rumors, and are in no way confirmed by Google. We also aren’t even sure if Gingerbread will be Android 3.0, where it could pop up as 2.3, 2.5, and so on. With all of the overhauls and revamps, we think Gingerbread deserves to stand out as a 3.0 product.

Expected to hit in mid October, wih devices shipping in November/December, we don’t have too much longer to find out what the sweetest Android may bring us.

What are some features you’d like to see in Android’s next version? Sound off in the comments!

According to a recent study conducted by Edison Research, 87 percent of the U.S. population is now aware of its existence. Surprising? Not really. Forget about Twitter’s overwhelming online presence, the site is constantly being thrown in our face throughout every media outlet imaginable. From CNN to ESPN, we’re constantly exposed to the endless stream of thoughts that Twitter encompasses.

While Twitter’s presence is undeniable, its future lacks certainty. Will Twitter continue to grow and thrive? In short, no. Why? Allow me to explain…

With nearly 90 percent of the U.S. population completely aware of Twitter, certainly a majority of them are actively using the service, right? Not really.

Twitter gets an estimated 180 million unique visitors internationally per day, but not all of them have accounts. Of the estimated 106 million accounts on Twitter, only 3 percent have more than 100 followers, while 24 percent of users have 0 followers. Only 40 percent of people who try Twitter remain active on the service after their first month.

While Twitter does receive quite a bit of attention, it has been proven to be of little use to the majority of people.

It’s All the Rage… For Now

Obviously, Twitter gets a lot of its traffic from outside sources promoting their accounts on the site, but how much exactly? 75 percent. That’s right, three-fourths of Twitter’s visitors come to the site as a result of promotions made by third parties.

That’s all fine and well for now, but hype eventually dies. What happens when these outside sources decide to abandon the social networking platform for the next big thing? That, my friends, will be the end of Twitter as we know it.

Too Connected

So why, exactly, do 60 percent of Twitter users quit within the first month of using the platform? Twitter simply doesn’t appeal to average internet users.

If you’re not a spammer, a narcissist, or a business owner, chances are Twitter isn’t of much use to you. Your everyday person signs up for Twitter to see what all the hype is about, figuring that they will be able to connect with friends and family, and read interesting news stories. Quickly, however, they are proven wrong. Twitter takes “connecting” to another level. New users are rapidly exposed to what Twitter is all about, and are overwhelmed with the constant influx of updates.

Most (normal) people don’t care what you’re eating for dinner, when you’re going to sleep, or how local firefighters rescued a cat from a nearby park. Soon, new Twitter users find that the platform is essentially a breeding ground for relentless marketing and ego inflation.

Funny enough, neither corporate entities nor people with a false sense of self-important care what you have to say. The way in which Twitter is used really defeats its purpose. If nearly every status update falls upon deaf ears, is it really connecting?

Other, Better Options

Despite the fact that Twitter is constantly shoved in your face, it’s not like there aren’t other options. There is an endless list of social networking mediums that exist, many of which are of much greater value to typical internet users. Sure, Twitter does an outstanding job of catering to users’ without much to say, but it is essentially useless to those who do have something to say. That’s where Facebook comes in.

Not only does Facebook cater to the average Joe by allowing them to speak their mind, they provide a familiar platform to do so. Learning from the mistakes that lead to the downfall of MySpace, Facebook provides a more familiar, easier to understand social networking experience.

Being wrapped up in the online tech world, you may not know it, but terms like hash, tweet, and retweet have no meaning to the vast majority of society. Terms such as like, fan, and share, however, are easily understood. Not to mention the fact that people actually like building, maintaining, and having a profile.

For these reasons, it’s clear why Facebook continues to dominate its competition. Currently second only to Google in terms of traffic, Facebook sees over 400 million people logging in every month, 50 percent of which visit the site every day.

Twitter Isn’t Profitable

Despite Twitter’s reach, the fact remains that they really don’t make any money. Why? Well, for one, they don’t really put much effort into actually becoming profitable. While this is a noble and refreshing concept considering the abundance of ad infested social networking platforms, it doesn’t do much for the company itself. Twitter relies on venture capital to fuel its operations.

How long will venture capital firms continue to shell out cash to an unprofitable service, though? In the end, all venture capital firms are concerned with is profiting from their investments.

This year, Twitter did release an advertising platform in hopes of turning profit. So far, it has yet to do so. Twitter limited the companies that they would allow to advertise to well known corporate entities, shunning small businesses who desire a self-serve advertising platform similar to Facebook’s. Hey, that’s their call, but how long will these advertisers last?

The truth of the matter is, their advertisements are reaching a demographic with a short attention span… people who, in all honesty, aren’t likely to even notice the advertisement as they quickly scan for updates. Why would these companies even pay for advertisements when there are thousands already following their account?

This has facilitated a transformation in the way we communicate with each other.

Here we look at some of these communities with over 1 million users, both active and defunct.

Image: