So back in 2003 I heard about this brand new site; MySpace. At the time I owned a skate shop in Las Vegas and all the lurkers we’re obsessing over this MySpace.com. As they explained how it was soooo much better than Friendster, I decided to give it a try.
One of the things that struck me right away was this sense of belonging to something. There was this basic carnal need to be on the “inside” when everyone else was on the outside. The best part was watching people who swore they would never join MySpace get hooked and start acting like junkies. It was an obsession to see who had left you a message, who added you as a friend or if anyone had commented on your pictures.
Things feel remarkably similar to the ongoing Twitter craze. There is this sense of belonging, of connecting to people that you don’t know. Communicating instantaneously with hundreds of people is amazing. According to compete.com, Twitter has grown almost 108% in one month to 35k people. And according to Blogpulse Twitter went from being mentioned in 1% of blogs back in mid February to 10% of blogs by mid March.
It is impossible to compare the growth of MySpace or YouTube to Twitter; two are platforms and one’s a channel. Here lies the real power of Twitter: Who has more power: a site that millions of people visit each day and stay on average of 20-30 minutes? Or a utility that is always with you via web, SMS and IM?
You have the capability to use Twitter like a hybrid IM/blog right from your Twitter page. I rarely use this page. I run Twitter from my Google Talk, which is run through on my Blackberry. This allows me to have Twitter on my phone without having to give out my cell phone # or have to pay for all the additional text message charges.
The challenges that are ahead for Twitter are that of scale. Can they continue to handle the load? MySpace crashed a lot back in the day, but something about the service kept people coming back.
Twitter has been having similar problems; so far people are sticking with it.
Twitter already has bands jumping on board. Can Twitter ad features like MySpace has? We have yet to see anything new from Twitter (I bet they’re just trying to hang on right now), but the users are taking care of that; there are plugins for WordPress, there are Twitter specific search engines plus Twitter mashups are popping up all over the place. Some bloggers have abondoned their blogs in favor of Twittering.
Many people are already predicting the demise of Twitter. I think they’ll pull through just fine. Twitterers seem pretty willing to live with the glitches caused by the sudden increase in users. I think Twitter is one of the newest ways to stay connected and will change the face of social networking. You think MySpace is looking at a way to copy Twitter? I do. And if they don’t someone else will.
Recomended blogs on this topic:
Micro Persuasion
Tac’s Twitter Page
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