Since everyone has been telling me it is the start of a new physical year  I thought it might be an appropriate time for one of those looking forward post.

Recently at a conference which I did not attend a “social media expert” made the bold statement that Twitter will be dead in 12 months. I’ve been asked multiple times from people who have attended the conference what my thoughts are on this statement. The person went on to say that location networks, specifically Whrrl, would fill the void of Twitter, and that Twitter offers no conversation or relationships.

My initial reaction to this statement would be to simply say no, that is untrue, and walk away. Besides, the person who made this statement offers no rational reason why Twitter would go away. I however will not stoop to that level of unprofessionalism. While I may not be a social media expert, I do consider myself a social media professional.

Twitter will be dead at some point, or at least in the sense that MySpace is dead now. This however will not happen anytime soon. To understand why this is the case you have to look no further than MySpace and understand the pattern of death associated with a network of this type that has reached a substantial number of users. First there has to be a mass desire for something better or against a problem with the network. Second there has to be an emerging network that not only addresses those problems, but adds an unexpected benefit over the dying network. Third and finally the emerging network must gain enough popularity among early adopters to encourage average users to join the new network.

This process can take years because getting enough people on an emerging network to have it present a threat to an establish network is not easy. It took Twitter 3 years to reach a critical level of members, Facebook was 4 years. The only mass complaint against Twitter currently is the downtime of the service. I predict that with the inclusion of sponsored tweets, which finally gives Twitter revenue, the Fail Whale will be virtually gone in 6 months. There is no emerging network that fills the same basic category of Twitter and yet adds additional value.

My bold statement however is that Whrrl will be dead in 12 months, along with a lot of other location based networks. In location based you have 4 Square, Gowalla, and then everyone else. I predict that in a year Whrrl will either be forced to close due to lack of support, or be bought out by Gowalla. I also predict Twitter will at least try buy 4 Square and integrate it in some fashion to their new location based services. I think Gowalla has the potential to be the biggest player in location based services, they had a bit of a rough start. Gowalla had a rough start, but it has tremendous upsides over 4 Square and a Twitter based location service.

The larger thing I would keep an eye on however is Facebook. If you go through my steps above they have very clearly entered into the first step. Watch and see what Google does with its Google Me service. Google has had a very hard time breaking into social media, Buzz, Wave, and Orkut have been complete flops. However I think that they have learned from their lessons and might be bringing the real deal this time. With the strength of Google Profiles they could very rapidly over take Facebook. I see it happening in the next 2 years.

Oh, and Ghana will win the World Cup… Not sure about that last one though.