The Evolution of Twitter
When Twitter first came out, the Tweet Box said “What’s on your mind?” instead of “What’s happening?” Early Twitter was all about the narcissistic tweets, like “I just ate kumquats for breakfast.” Only later on did Twitter find its killer app: sharing links. When this happened, the useful information started to outweigh more mundane narcissistic tweets. The evolution of Twitter is far from complete, though. Things like hashtags and retweets were invented by the user base, not by the company. Sometimes innovation comes from the bottom.
I’m curious what Twitter will look like in a decade, assuming it’s still around. As social networking has evolved over the years, the shelf life of many social networking sites has improved. Friendster only existed for a very brief time. MySpace lingered longer. Facebook’s growth has slowed, but the site is still pretty successful. What will the future hold for Twitter? No one can say for sure, at least not in 140 characters or less.
What’s your experience with Twitter? Are you on it, and if so, how do you use it? Let me know in the comments. And if you are a Twitter user, you can find links to my latest blog posts at @stevenjlovelace.
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