the juggernaut that is twitter
Posted in web apps, twitter on March 16th, 2009Nielsen Online reports that Twitter continues to grow at an astounding rate. Something on the order of 1380% year over year, and 50% from January to February. I for one don’t think that torrid pace is going to fade quickly either. Nobody understands twitter at first look, but it invariably wins the hearts and minds of developers and users alike.
The Internet itself grew at an astounding rate as first email then the web turned into the killer apps that made the underlying ‘net indispensible. In spite of the telcos’ efforts to build “smart” Internets, the model that won out was the most flexible one - a dumb transport mechanism deferring all intelligence to the endpoint applications. That made it infinitely useful and flexible, for so many cool things like twitter that could not be envisioned in earlier times.
Twitter itself is also simplicity of purpose, leaving vast room for value-add services at the endpoints. They try to do nothing but deliver a simple, easy to use, easy to interface with service. And let the programmers of the world do the rest. Simplicity.
I wasn’t sure I’d have a car last this long, but my 1997 saturn has now gone over the 100k mark. It’s looking old, but never has any problems. That and the fact that it gets pretty good gas mileage (manual transmission) means it’s a very cheap car to operate. So sexy new cars be damned, I plan to keep driving this around for a while.

