Can Google Really Build a Twitter Killer?

Techwriter10 0 447 Views

Google is reportedly coming out with a this week. Google's tried social a few times, but it hasn't done very well. Why are people so excited about it this time?

It's important to remember that everything Google touches doesn't turn to gold. Sometimes they screw up. Sometimes they overestimate their own abilities, and sometimes they are just late to the game.

Do We Need a Twitter Killer?

Everywhere I look tonight, I see people calling this unknown quantity a "Twitter Killer." Bing is a "Google Killer" and Nexus One is an "iPhone Killer" and now Google has a "Twitter Killer." But usually these things don't turn out to kill the reigning champion because people are satisfied with what they are using.

There are millions of happy Twitter users out there. What is their motivation to move to Google? Micro Blogging is not sexy. It's 140 characters. Google would need to come up with something amazing to undermine the entire Twitter eco system, no easy task.

Google Wants a Piece of Social Real Bad

It's clear that Google has seen the future and its name is social networking. To that end, in the last several months Google has moved Google Search to be more social. When you search now, you see Twitter streams in real time in the Google interface. Marissa Meyer has talked about adding social results from your friends in the results stream (a set of trusted results).

It's all about Google recognizing social as a trend that it wants to control. It wants to attach its little Google Ads to our social streams and make money. Who can blame them? But Google and Microsoft and Apple don't always have to get everything they want. Sometimes the market decides otherwise.

Speculation has it that Google will make its micro blogging tool part of Gmail, perhaps in the Google Talk client. Well, Google Talk is one of those tools I was just referring to that Google developed, but didn't really end up replacing the other tools people were using. Why? Because people were perfectly satisfied with AIIM or Yahoo! IM and they didn't need another tool.

Now, it may come to pass that Google creates a killer micro blogging application, and we all love it, and Twitter becomes last year's model just like that. But it's not going to happen just because Google wants it to. It will take a massive shift and I'm not sure people are ready to do that just now.

Dani AI

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As points out, market buzz about a "killer" product usually overlooks how hard it is to displace an entrenched network. is right too: big-company backing helps, but it is not a guarantee of long‑term leadership.

The advantage incumbents hold is structural. What keeps a social product sticky is not only a clean UI but a dense network of followers, third‑party clients and tools, content discovery patterns, and user habits. Those create real switching costs: people bring audiences, conversations and workflows with them. A newcomer can attract signups fast, but converting that into a living, breathing ecosystem takes different work — developer buy‑in, reliable APIs, migration paths for followers and content, and product features that solve pain points the incumbent has not.

If a newcomer wants to compete seriously, the priorities are concrete: 1) a clear, differentiated value (better creator monetization, search/discovery, moderation, or conversation model), 2) frictionless onboarding and migration tools, and 3) an open developer story with incentives to build on the platform. Early signals to watch are retention (day 1, day 7), DAU/MAU, average sessions per user, and the number of third‑party integrations or API keys issued — these show whether initial curiosity becomes habitual use.

Practical takeaways for businesses and marketers: do not abandon existing channels; protect owned assets (email lists, websites); experiment with new platforms but measure referral and engagement lift; and make content portable so you can follow your audience, not just the platform. The "killer" label makes for headlines, but history shows multiple services can coexist — plan to adapt, not to flip a single switch.

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igen 0 Light Poster

Not every google product will be no 1.
Twitter will be twitter for quite a while, other apps will takes some logner timer to prove before compete

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