I like Twitter, but it has a big problem

The reasons she lists are why it will be extremely difficult to get Twitter to go mainstream. In the meantime, social networks and IM clients are adding or expand similar functionality, which make it even more difficult for Twitter to expand.

The lack of revenue doesn't help things, either ...

Twitter is easy to explain: "It's a site for blogging, but posts are limited to 140 characters." A good way to sell it is that it's fun: you can post that "chicken is yummy" without having to write an essay about it. The language of it is easy to learn: @ means at. Maybe people sign up and leave, but I don't think these reasons explain that.

I think twitter has a play and here's why.....It seems that the immediacy of data is as important if not more than quality or even context. Follow a twit around a live event and its amazing the shift. Take a normal tech conference, 3 years ago we would go see a few of the blogs that night or the next day. Heck I remember when The TWICE daily @ CES was relevant. Then came liveblogging events, this was cool because it created a feedback loop and discussion. Now with Twitter, the data flow is sudden, coming from all angles. It changes how you experience and event. Once location specific soc-nets develop and more prominent bloggers leverage twitter as an extension of themselves the mainstream will adopt. Maybe not in the way it has w/ facebook etc...but its too interesting for it not to.

Twitter's nebulous nature lends to inherent value for many groups of people. It can be so many things to so many different people. If you want to narrow down the selling proposition, then declaring it a new mode of communication would fit the bill pretty well.

Hmm. Let's say Twitter is like IM meets blogs.

Unfortunately for me, only a handful of my friends use IM regularly (at least the ones I talk to with it) and none of them blog (and let's not even talk about the ones who call me to fix their printers). Twitter is irrelevant to me because I won't see my friend's posts and they won't see mine. That's too bad, because I really liked the concept.

I kind of like that certain people won't ever 'get' it. (I was one of them for along time, much like the blogger here :-) )

s/twitter/email/g and you have an early 90's commentary.

I have to disagree with many of these points. For a lot of people I know, twitter's purpose is manifold.

For some, it's for pushing out ideas and commentary on their work and the occasional bit of inter-office banter for all to see.

And for others, they talk about their lives, interacting with friends in a way that is, for some, even more accessible than anything else.

And yes, there will be issues of 'twittetiquette' or other, stranger and more unwieldly terms. All new forms of communication have this.

From Usenet's posting guidelines.. to people trying to avoid the use of acronyms on IRC.. So-called 'Grammar Nazis' on so many forums.

And then, on the flipside, for many kids today, you're seen as strange if you aren't heavy on the acronymns, abbreviations and emoticons.

In short, Twitter is what you want to do with it. It's a blank slate where you create what you want, at upto 140 characters at a time.

And you may notice that prove my point, each of the little mini-paragraphs above.. are all under 140 characters. :)