There's been lots of cybertalk about whether users will stick with Twitter in light of stats that show
3 out of 5 who start tweeting drop it by the next month. Fact is, there's always going to be a turnover.
Twitter, designed to serve our microblogging urges, is still very new. There are new apps designed to facilitate tweeting and we can now limit
searches to the tweeting universe. Perhaps more importantly, that type of writing forces folks to write tight and bright. It's easier to write more rather than less. You can write in twists and turns, and drag on without any end. Twitter challenges users on that front.
Along comes the next question, posed by
Chris Crum on WebProNews: What's Twitter mean to you in only one word? For Crum, it's what interests you most, whether it's news, entertainment or how many times Johnny visits his bud down the street.
"If twitter accounts are like blogs, then Twitter is like its own
Blogosphere (or microblogosphere) combined with a feed reader. You
select the ones you want to follow, just as if you were selecting what
blogs to subscribe to," writes Crum. "To me, this is what Twitter is about. That’s not all it’s about, but
that’s how I get the most use out of it. ... I read Twitter a lot more than
I write on Twitter, but that’s still using it."
For some, Twitter represents a refreshing way of job networking (e.g.,
http://twitter.com/jobangels) and for others it's a useful social media tool to push the latest news to a wide and diverse audience. Microblogging doesn't make folks to read through long blog posts, but gives them that option -- upfront -- whether to check it out.
Crum's piece is available at
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/05/01/what-is-twitter-about-in-one-word.