Fruggums

When you think about it, we've come a long way from e-mail. Most notably of course - instant messaging, which also is mainstream - essentially it's e-mail, just, instant. There's not much to it, so people got hooked?Hear me out, I'm going somewhere with this.

Then came Twitter.

Twitter isn't mainstream (yet?).

Sure, every other person now knows what it's about, but they aren't on it, because they can't be.

Why? It isn't - Type it out, pick who it goes to, done, like every other form of personal internet/mobile/physical communication out there.

It's far more open, complex and marvelous than that. Some people find it scary, others pointless. They just don't get it. Just recently I'm seeing people who criticized me for joining Twitter ("Twitter is so stupid... you're stupid") joining themselves (you know who you are). As expected, they couldn't grasp what all the fuss is about and left. Some of them didn't even get to their first tweet. 

Twitter is for a different kind of person - this isn't followed by a 'for now?' because it always will be in my opinion. You don't have to be a geek to treasure everything that is Twitter. But you can't be the sort of person who owns a MacBook purely for Photo Booth (if you know what I mean). Twitter works best if you're an internet-person. Your natural tendencies are to blog - you connect, you explore. You do something more than just log into Facebook and start up that MSN Messenger thing and nudge the brains out of people (ew). 

Twitter isn't straightforward - you need to learn how to use it. What @replies are, how to send a DM, what's-this-search-thing, the clients, the apps and all that shazzaz. Some people just won't make the effort, give up and scaddadle, and those are the ones who will end up coming back again when Twitter goes mainstream. Right now we're at the "Hey, what's this Twitter thing everyone is talking about" stage. If Twitter goes mainstream, people will be forced to join just because, well, everyone else already has. Which is quite a sad affair but unfortunately true. But this is only if Twitter does go mainstream. 

It's quite a strange scenario when you think about it. Maybe something like this will happen. Assume there are 100 number of Facebook users joining twitter each second. 30 of them won't get to the first tweet. Another 40 will leave after a week. 20 more after a month. 10 of them will stay on and do themselves a favor by figuring it out and joining the community. When this 10% grows to 10% (or even 5%) of the overall Facebook population, there'll be this landslide of people just falling into Twitter. That doesn't mean they're going to stay for long, but - Well, it's just a theory.

Personally, I love the fact Twitter isn't for everyone. The twitterati seems to simply be a great crowd at the moment. It doesn't have a pool of those damn YouTube commenters and Facebook "I'm bored..." -ers to send people into incessant facepalming. Don't get me wrong, I'm not being selfish ("No Twitter for you!"). Anyone is welcome, and obviously I have no way to stop you or anyone from joining. Just don't come along, join, leave and then shout out "Twitter is pointless." just because you don't get it. 

Random thoughts, random thoughts.