Unmemorable Title

Meme - Twitter Killer?

After an invite from a colleague, I’ve been examining Yahoo’s Meme – yet another jumper on Twitter’s runaway bandwagon. I’ve not had time to form a full opinion yet, but I’ll share some of my initial impressions.

Signup

Not as elegant as Twitter’s sign in and set off, Meme needs you to have a Yahoo ID. Not a great surprise given that everything you do on Yahoo bar using their search engine requires an ID, but still an inconvenience for anyone who hates filling out forms. Certainly nothing to rival Twitter’s mobile phone compatible signup process.

Interface/Functionality

The first thing that leaps out at me is that there’s nowhere to put a link to my site. That to me suggests that we’ll see an even higher level of shilling and self-promotion on Meme, as there’s no clickthroughs available from a user’s homepage.

The Repost function is nice, giving the sort of functionality you’d need a TweetDeck or other app for on Twitter, and it tallies up the number of times a particular post has been re-posted.

The big difference between Meme and Twitter is that you can choose to post text, photos, videos or music. Obviously on Twitter you’d need TwitPic or a series of links to do this, so it’s a nice little USP for Meme. Good thinking from Yahoo to fill that niche too.

Trends

The best thing about Twitter for news junkies and marketers alike is the trending topics function. Meme puts it’s “popular” function front and centre too, so you can see what’s being reposted. Strangely, the top repost is the side of an Asian supermarket, and the second is an Elephant wearing an unconvincing tiger mask. It seems Meme’s trends are much more Digg than CNN.

On-the-Go

Non-existent. There seems to be no mobile functionality when I put the URL into my mobile phone’s browser. It might work on an iPhone, but we more retro phonesurfers don’t seem to be catered for.

Userbase

At the moment, Meme is invite only, so there’s not much of a user base (I’m one of two results when one searches “copywriter”) – and it’s definitely a much less western crowd than Twitter. However, within three minutes of signing up I had been followed by an Indian “SEO & SEM Expert”.

Some things never change then.

First Impressions

Meme looks to be more socially-oriented than Twitter, and certainly much less serious and self-important. I’ll be very suprised if businesses embrace it, but it seems like a calculated effort to appeal to the teenage market that Twitter leaves cold.

It’s not a certainty that Meme will be successful, but it certainly looks like it could be an interesting few months for the future of microblogging.

If you’re on Meme, follow Mr603
If you’re on Twitter, follow Mr603
If you just want to share your experiences with microblogging, leave a comment below.

Related posts:

1. Follow Friday – The Copywriters You Should Be Following on Twitter
2. Firstfound Twitter Training Document
3. Trial by Twitter – Jan Moir Feels the Brunt of a Social Media Backlash