Twitter has cashed in on the essence what draws people to the internet. So few other networks have even begun to try to grasp what they have pretty much perfected. Twitter provides the ability to connect and share without getting sucked in. It acts as a peripheral, a side view.
You can pretty much keep doing anything from drive your car to take a shower and still keep on top of what is happening in the world and let the world know what you are up to. Because of the huge amount of traffic on the site, there is even a certain amount of anonymity to individual posts. Sure, people can opt to follow specific Tweeters but, they can also decide to block anybody they don't want reading their posts.
Technology, as a whole, has become all absorbing. All engulfing. It is all too easy to sit down for a few seconds to check email and end up spending far too long in front of the screen. Other tasks and obligations fall by the wayside as widgets and posts vie for our time. With Twitter, the information comes in bursts. Short, random bursts. It gives us back autonomy over our own lives.
Social networking sites work on the premise of creating networks of friends. With security and privacy on top of everybody's mind, the information shared is becoming ever more cloistered to the allowed few. How Twitter differs is it permits the thoughts to cross the shelter and safety of the friends people have made. It is, therefore, much better suited to spread messages to individuals and groups we hope to reach but, do not have access to.
There is a place for social networking, just as there is a place for websites and blogs. There is also a niche for Twitter. Perhaps the only drawback is its inability to stay on top of capacity demand. One year ago there was a post on their website:
"As reflected in the sidebar of this blog, we’re seeing a lot of over capacity errors and long load times. We’re working on this problem.
Update: We’re still investigating this issue. We are temporarily reducing the API rate limit to 20 requests per hour in order to help address the latency issues we’re seeing. "
So far, there is little competition but, with the introduction of Google Wave, Twitter better stay on the tip of its claws. Due to the open platform architecture and its open source approach, coupled with its heavy involvement with Cloud Computing, Google is well poised to address where Twitter falls apart. Then again, maybe Google will just buy Twitter and see what they can make of it. In case you haven't seen the rumors, this is not such a far fetched notion.
