The steady rise of Twitter

Interesting article here, plotting the growth of Twitter vs the growth of Blogger. Obviously this isn’t a fair comparison, but it’s interesting nonetheless, mainly because I partly expected Twitter’s popularity to level off by now.

We’ve noticed some interesting usage here at LBi, where we’ve been using Twitter for a mixture of social commentary, idle musings and some work stuff as well (particularly letting people know when we’ll be late, or where we can be found if we’re not at our desks). The initial honeymoon period has passed, and a few diehards are persevering and still finding it worthwhile and / or enjoyable. Well, I am anyway..!

As I anticipated when I first wrote about Twitter back in March, the success of the service (from my perspective) was all based around how I would interact with it. The nature of the information is transitory and non-critical, and in my head I have a slider setting for how interested I am in other people’s comments at any point in time. If I’m busy, I want to turn that slider right down. But I’d still like the option to catch up later.

In spite of my previous comment, I decided to read people’s twitter comments in my RSS feed reader, and it turns out this has been more manageable than I expected. Also I’ve been using Twitterrific, which is an app that runs on Mac OS X, and the latest beta version (2.1) integrates nicely with Growl. Which is very nice indeed, as it provides just the right amount of interruption (i.e. not much at all).

And as for public twittering, there are some interesting feeds out there. Industry commentators Robert Scoble, Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis sometimes have something interesting to say that doesn’t appear in their blogs – and it’s nice to see their human side too. Sean McMinn’s Tales of Dismay story – being written one line at a time – is more engaging than it sounds. Senator John Edward’s twitters haven’t fulfilled their potential though – he just says where he is, most of the time, rather than anything particularly insightful. It isn’t good enough to just use the technology, John, you’re not just ticking boxes y’know. Not that I have a vote to give you…

Anyway, here we are, two months in and still going strong. Go Twitter!

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Update 11.05.07: It turns out some of the data was incorrect (see update here). But the upsurge appears to be correct.