Two facts are known through the web and tech community regarding Twitter: 1) It has quickly moved from a simple ‘what are you doing?’ tool to the poster-child of the micro-blogging phenomenon 2) It has been having huge scaling issues which has been causing service outages over the past several months. Both facts have created BIG issues for Twitter (Tissues).
I cannot add anything to the second Tissue, others have blogged about the technology and architectural framework issues that Twitter is experiencing. Ironically, Tim O’Reilly messaged his interest in blog post detailing some hypothesis about Twitter’s issues via a tweet itself. I definitely recommend reading it. Anyway, technology is one major Tissue, let’s leave it at that.
Secondly, micro-blogging has taken hold. This is also a major Tissue. Quite simply, there are so many things in the world you can convey in 140 characters (the character limit that Twitter allows in a single message). Anything you can think of, even notifying others of earthquakes, can fly in seconds over Twitter. Because of this dynamic, many are shooting their thoughts over Twitter instead of blogging. I find myself tweeting much more than blogging because I find I can convey much of the thought in two sentences so why ‘go on’ about it. So we are witnessing a change in human behavior or at least the behavior of early technology adopters, we still must admit most of the world doesn’t blog or tweet.
Anyway, one could argue this dynamic is basically causing Twitter to slowly but surely handle all of the messaging load from every blogging platform out there, a major Tissue. In fact, now even when people blog, they shoot a note out via Twitter that their blog post is posted. When they use FriendFeed, Tweets are fired out. When people reply, Tweets are fired out. So Twitter’s success, adoption and use cases is what is causing all of the Tissues to begin with and could lead to Twitter’s downfall, the ultimate irony.
It is this irony that I find the most fascinating of all. I’m personally rooting for Twitter.
BTW, I could have used Twitter to convey much of this via Twitter instead of blogging. In fact, I did to make a point. And don’t forget to find my tweet notifying you all that I published this blog post
.