2009 shapes to be the year when Twitter moves into the mainstream as a communication, micro-blogging and most importantly a marketing tool. Just like 2008 was the year when Facebook moved beyond college networks, 2009 is the year when Twitter moves beyond bloggers and geeks (and politicians like Obama who are being advised by bloggers and geeks) into the mainstream. Twitter is still overflowing with youthful energy; it is still an “in-place”, obsessively driven by techno-geeks, bloggers, marketers and business promotion. It is the format and design stupid! The tremendous growth of Twitter is attributed to two factors:
- The 140 characters limit for all messages.
- Ability to “follow” or listen-in on Twitter stream of others, i.e. famous people and friends.
- I would add a third factor. The avatars that add visual orientation to the flow of messages (compare to the Achilles Heal of email, the blur of infinite text). This incidentally is the reason why Facebook and Twitter are taking such a huge bite out of email as a communication tool).
Let’s frame the conversation about Twitter in the context of the Internet history. Twitter today is what..
- Bulletin Boards were in 1985
- “You got mail” and email lists in 1996
- Usenet conversations in 1997
- Blogs in 2004
- RSS and syndication in 2006
- Digg in 2007
- Facebook in 2008
Just to confirm the trend there are these ubiquitous “ten-lists”:
10 Ways Twitter Will Change Blog Design in 2009.
10 ways to use Twitter to promote your business.
The Ten Commandments of Twitter.
