It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long since I started using twitter.com. In fact, it really hasn’t been that long. But there is a whole lot of talk about the effect of a couple of big stories that have revolved around the web service. Most notably, the smackdown that Ashton Kutcher gave CNN and the recent joining of the queen of daytime talk, Oprah.
The biggest bit of talk is whether those two stories mean that twitter has officially gone mainstream or not. On top of that, if it has gone mainstream, will that be the beginning of its demise as the geek core that made it famous begin an exodus? As to the mainstream question, I think it has, or nearly has gone mainstream. Will that mean the end of it? Not likely.
People said the same thing when Facebook opened up their doors to people without .edu email addresses. The rabble was let in, they said. The younger users will flock away to competitors like myspace. In fact, Facebook has grown exponentially since then. 
Twitter will also grow exponentially. Or should anyways. It has to try and keep up with the growth. Something that twitter hasn’t been doing so well with in recent months. The fail whale has become a rather regular occurance. Further, geeks aren’t going to exodus from twitter. There will always be a bigger, fancier, better service to come along. Some will bleed off the edge to those services, but a majority of the people who use twitter now, realize it’s usefullness and will continue to use it.
Feel free to explore those other services, you wouldn’t want to wait a few years to join the next twitter like I did. 😉
In case you missed it, I can be found on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/thatedeguy
About Shane Ede
I too have had problems with accessing Twitter especially mid-day when the traffic peaks are likely the busiest. Will Twitter really scale?
I really like twitter, but I feel it is getting away from its main goal! I hope it gets bigger!
Well, of course Twitter will try to keep up with the recent trends and keep the competitors behind. Its difficult to see into the future and also difficult to tell what drives people to use one social network for another.
Twitter has a LONG way to go, they are very popular in US and need to expand to other countries. They should definitely have country specific trends to start luring non-US users. I would also think they would do well by ensuring SMS based updates would work seemlessly for users irrespective of their service provider.
According to me twitter’s growth might flatten out in some time but it will continue to grow in other geographies.
“Neilsen Online data” indicates that Twitter’s attrition rate is now above 60% that means 60% of Twitter users fail to return the following month and if this rate continues will pose a huge problem for growth.
Twitter is showing up everywhere. I don’t know if it is quiet mainstream yet but it seems pretty darn close.
No, I don’t think it is done, rather it is just a start and hopefully Twitter will overcome all other social medias in near future.