Twitter Explodes Into Mainstream

This has been a huge week for Twitter.  I first came across Twitter a few years back at SXSW.  And to be honest, I didn’t get the point.  It was a microblog, so you could just type a quick note.  But I already had “Asides” on my blog, and that had an RSS if someone wanted to get just that part.  But the social aspect of Twitter allowed it to quickly find an audience. 

Over the past few years, Twitter has picked up steam, starting as the ultimate form of narcissism for the tech savvy, to being a customer service medium for companies, to now being the place to hear from your favorite celebs.

But I can’t think of many things that have had a week like this past week for Twitter.  It started with a friendly feud between Ashton Kutcher and CNN.  Ashton declared a race to see who would get 1 million followers first; the most trusted news network in the country that tweets about breaking world news, or the guy from Dude, Where’s My Car, who tweets about stuff he finds cool.  This being the Internet, we know who won.

It may sound like I’m knocking Ashton, but in fact I fully supported his effort, especially since it came with an offer to donate 10,000 mosquito nets to Africa to help stop the spread of malaria.  We even made an offer on our Facebook page to donate 300 children vaccinations if Ashton won.  I liked that Ashton was bringing more attention to the medium.  The bigger Twitter is, the more useful it becomes.

The end of the week brought another celebrity joined the Twitterverse, Oprah.  And judging fro the fact that within a 24 hours, Oprah had over 300,000 followers on Twitter, she has likely signed up a ton of new users.

While at this last SXSW, I attended a session on doing business in China.  While there I learned that the biggest social network in China is a Twitter like service, QZone, and that most users don’t have what we would consider internet service.  This network is said to have more users than the Internet itself.  Considering that, and the fact that everyone from Barack Obama to the Denton police department have Twitter accounts, it’s looking like Twitter may become the most used social network in the country.

Twitter is not just sitting back waiting for success.  They launched a direct assault on Facebook this week with the launch of Sign in with Twitter, which competes directly with Facebook Connect.  We are already making application that leverage the ability to sign up to a site with a couple of clicks to use your Twitter account.  The integration will be seamless, and is likely to become a standard.

If you’re interested in seeing the work USWeb is doing in social media marketing and Twitter, please feel free to contact us.