The degree of antipathy people hold towards Twitter is surprising.
People adopting the new service offer grudging, embarrassed apologies. The people who "refuse to Twitter" vocally criticize their tweeting peers, and proclaim that they "don't understand it." (My bet: they will likely be the first to capitulate.)
Firstly: what is there to understand? Twitter is just a web resource that collects mass text messages from contacts (friends or otherwise) using an aggregator like Google Reader or Facebook News Feed. Don't over think it. Really, that's it.
Secondly: I think that everyone needs to give a long, hard look at mobile media, and stop to think about how our internet usage habits will likely change when almost everyone has a smart phone. Were you a skeptic of texting a few years ago, like I was? Suddenly, Twitter doesn't look so silly.
As the NYT points out, that's not what it's being used for right now. It's being used for market research and the net narcissism of early adopters. It has no business model.
But will it take off? I think it depends on the penetration of smart phones--i.e. replacing regular cell phones or even QRTY's.
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2 comments:
I'm on Twitter again...but I refuse to call updates Tweets! Call me a snob if you must, or just misguided and old.
I don't think the success of Twitter is resting on the success of smart phones - you can easily send a tweet (yeah, I said it) from a normal cell phone...also, you can "follow" Shaq. Sweet.
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