JUNE 15, 2009

The Real Twitpocalypse Is Here: I’m Now Addicted To Twitter

I have failed you, master.

And by master I mean Gayle, the Queen of Social media here at TMG. Last April she talked about this newfangled thing called Twitter and how she was going to shy away from it. At the time I too was going to resist Twitter, but it’s gotten so catchy as more and more of my blogger friends adopted it. I guess if you can’t beat them- join them, ain’t that right, Gayle?

This new social outlet started grew slowly. First, I had an account simply regurgitating the feed from my blog. Then I slowly started to pay attention to some of the conversations out there on the Tweetscape. Twitter for me grew from a feed on my Google Reader to an occasional check of Twitter.com to a TweetDeckwindow at work. Now my addiction is full blown; this past weekend I installed TweetDeck at home so I can monitor Twitter at all times, like one of those resistance fighters staring at The Matrix.

My recent immersion into Twitter has given me new perspective into the expected Twitpocalypse, a bug derived from the unexpected number of Tweets that was poised to crash the entire system. Like Y2K, the bug wasn’t as bad as expected, but it is a sign of how large this new social media medium has grown.

Despite the avoidance of impending Twitter doom, there are signs that Twitter may be reaching a plateau, or even a decline. Numbers charting Twitter’s growthshows that its growth rate is slowing down compared to other social media giants like Facebook.  So maybe Twitter will one day go by the wayside like Friendster, but for now it still remains a viable and groundbreaking form of communication - and I’m a part of it.