Shake Gently – advertising technology blog

Twitter Goes Mainstream

In the past, I was hesitant to say that my favorite microblogging service, Twitter, had gone mainstream. Major media coverage of Twitter has picked up significantly and posting Twitter usernames has become very common.

According to a recent MarketingVox article:

Over one in ten (11%) online adults in the US say they have used Twitter — or a similar service –- to share updates about themselves or view updates about others.
Nearly one in five (19%) online adults ages 18-24 used Twitter and similar services, as have 20% of online adults age 25-34.

My use of the service has gone up significantly over the last year and is a core component of my social media participation (along with Facebook) and I average about 6 tweets per day.

I created my Twitter account in 2006 but my utilization didn’t really pick up until early 2008. You can check out my tweet stats at http://tweetstats.com/graphs/dustinj or follow me at http://twitter.com/dustinj.

There’s an article today on MarketingVox called Omniture Brings Twitter Tracking to SiteCatalyst about how one company is enabling the tracking of brand conversations on Twitter.

There’s an article on TechCrunch today about viewing Twitter as a search engine competitor. Like TechCrunch, I run into people all the time that don’t get the big deal about Twitter, but I don’t expect everyone to understand. The important topic for brands (and their agencies) is “More and more people are starting to use Twitter to talk about brands in real time as they interact with them”.

With tweets being limited to 140 characters, there is definitely a different use for microblogging services vs. a traditional blog, but with the ability to post updates from mobile devices or external application, I’m much more likely to post a quick thought there vs. taking an hr to write a blog post.

There are new companies being launched everyday to take advantage of the growth in microblogging, including a Twitter brand directory that I read about today on AdWeek.

The Wall Street Journal is one of many that references Twitter going mainstream. Facebook and blog integration for synchronizing status updates has been around for a while and has helped to increase the awareness of microblogging.

Along with email addresses, Wired Magazine even lists links to editor and contributor Twitter accounts on some areas of their site like Geek Dad:

With the significant growth Twitter has experienced and their recent cash infusion of $35 million, I don’t see the service going away anytime soon.

I think I can say that we have probably reached that point: welcome to mainstream, Twitter.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, mainstream, microblogging