Here are some of the reasons why I think Twitter is so popular. These are written in no particular order and this is by no means an exhaustive list of reasons why Twitter might be so popular.
- It’s an extremely easy concept to pick up for anyone without any training whatsoever
- It’s highly usable through all types of web enabled devices
- It leverages existing, globally adopted content generation practices such as text messaging which is already incredibly popular
- It brings a novelty factor and a new arena within which marketeers and tech enthusiast can experiment in and inevitably end up viral marketing it due to their initial enthusiasm about the tool
- Most users today find blogging or web authoring cumbersome, but will happily Twitter away as it’s easy and quick
- Most users don’t posses serious writing skills and Twitter does not require serious writing skills
- Users don’t have time to write and read anymore and Twitter messages are well within the threshold of average user’s attention span
- Internet suffers from a massive problem of information overload and Twitter seems to offer a way out of it to some extent
- It is still virtually impossible to do more serious work (blogging and authoring) on modern portable devices today, even Net Books. The most that can really be done is an odd Twitter message here and there, so most users then spend time doing what they can with the tools that are available to them today
- Internet just wasn’t designed for big, lengthy, hard to read articles and books, so users are much more likely to read tweets and stick to reading them over longer period of time
- It’s a fairly immediate way of communicating and can be very personal, which beats most other forms of communication
- Users like trivia and nonsense as we live in the world of entertainment today and Twitter offers much light information, non-stop at every one’s easy disposal
- The curiosity and celebrity backing which has surrounded Twitter drives users towards experimenting with it and trying to work out what the hype is really all about
Please do comment with your own views and opinions on why you think Twitter is so successful.
Written by Jason Grant on 15th April 2009