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Your take on Twitter...Fad or the Future?

1 points by nategraves ↗ HN
So, recently I've sat in on a number of discussions on Twitter and I find myself still divided.

On one hand, I hear the opinions of social media marketers who look at Twitter as a new and exciting way of engaging in conversation, creating greater brand loyalty, and turning customers into brand advocates.

On the other hand, I look at Twitter's widespread adoption and variety of uses, and I find myself wondering if Twitter will be another flash in the pan. I also wonder if the fact that Twitter makes their data available for other applications to use and that they're starting to place more emphasis on search will end up giving the company greater relevance for a longer period of time.

So, do you think that microblogging is a long-term trend with the web? Personally, I think that Twitter's user base will continue to grow, but that many of it's early adopters will move on to the next fad as soon as it comes along.

4 comments

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psranga
Long term trend. Status update is the #1 feature I/my network use on Facebook. I use things like "Notes" only because there's a char limit in status update.

And I use Facebook instead of Twitter only because most of my network uses FB and not twitter.

I'm unsure if Twitter itself will make it big, but twitter-style updates are going to be big.

bbgm
Long term trend. It's useful in all kinds of ways, from kicking of discussions, near real-time alerts, tracking chatter on topics of interest, and other kinds of activities. Agree that while it might not be Twitter, the trend of lightweight messaging services is here to stay
minalecs
Long term, but.. niche. At one time, everyone and there mother were writing blogs, and now we have pretty much left it to the professional writers. Wading through all the bs, of messages like going to the store, walking the dog, are completely unnecessary.. no one needs to know, or there are very few that actually care what any one person is doing with 90% of there time. It is useful from a real time news status. Work purposes it could be useful, if more companies embraced short messaging and status updates. Following famous people or celebrities is entertaining. For discussion purposes I still prefer IRC or forums, or message boards. 140 characters is hardly enough characters to post anything useful in my opinion
pedalpete
Future, though I think it is really just beginning to understand it's potential uses. The @ and # is an example of this growing change. It isn't necessarily about 'status' anymore, but a mix of conversation surrounding data, and the ability of the right connections to go viral.

I've been considering how to use twitter as a notification service for my app, instead of using e-mail. The problem with e-mail is 1) i don't want to be loading peoples inboxes 2) it isn't discoverable to people who might be interested in the same thing, 3) i never sign-up for e-mail notifications, so why would i expect my users to do so.

At the same time, notification is the one of the top requests I get from my users. So, I'm investigating what it would be like to set-up a system whereby I could use twitter for notifactions on specific items using the # code. Solves the problem of in box discovery, and twitter is much more ignorable than e-mail (if the user chooses).