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

I’m at the fall 2008 CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment conference in San Francisco this week.

Like many of my colleagues, my blog has taken a backseat to many other things, such as Twitter.

That being said, I will be posting updates via my Twitter account at http://twitter.com/dustinj. Updates will also be posted (through integration) to the Twitter widget on the right of this blog (and any other place I have integration like Facebook, Plaxo Pulse, etc).

Currently, the tracks that I will be attending include the following.

Tuesday

• Mobile Marketing and Advertising Metrics: Establishing Meaningful Benchmarks and KPIs
• Mobile Marketing Ecosystem: What Carriers Want?
• Mobile Marketing Ecosystem: What Brands and Agencies Want?
• Mobile Social Networks

Wednesday

• mCommerce: Device, Application, or Technology?
• Consumers, Mobile Devices, and LBS – Defining the Marketing Zen Moment
• The Common Short Code Potential: Picking Apart the Pieces of the Puzzle
• Accelerating Mobile Use: Upsetting the Mobile Paradigm

I’m hoping to post a summary of the event (probably a presentation via slideshare) in late September in preparation for a presentation I’ll be giving Oct 1.

If you are at the event yourself or want more details about it (I’ve been to the event the last 3 years), give me a shout or leave a comment.

A great article today from Silicon Alley Insider called How Twitter Could Be Worth A Billion In A Year [via Mediapost]

I’m a huge fan of Twitter, and I agree that Twitter has potential for being a platform for mobile payments.

Not sure what Twitter is?

You can check out my Twitter presentation or create a Twitter account and follow me on Twitter to learn more. I also have my interactions in the twitterverse posted to my blog and Facebook page.

Below is the summary from Mediapost:

Twitter is undoubtedly the hottest Web property with no revenue model. Silicon Alley Insider’s Nate Westheimer suggests that the microblogging service move into the peer-to-peer mobile payments space, where “no one has much of a head start.”

So what are P2P mobile payments? Think PayPal for your phone. What does this have to do with Twitter? At first glance, not much, really, except for the fact that Twitter is widely used on mobile phones. As Westheimer says, “Twitter is far from being a ubiquitous mobile platform, but they have more penetration and usage than any other mobile service and their current user base is the same important group of technology early adopters that PayPal enjoyed when it convinced the world that you could send money to an email address.”

Forget for a moment that the Twitter infrastructure often fails, and consider the implications of a carrier-independent mobile messaging system. This is effectively what Twitter could achieve when the re-architecting “is all said and done,” making it a powerful alternative to social and mobile SMS text messages. As more and more people become familiar with the Twitter language, the microblogging service could easily become the de facto platform for mobile payments. Imagine simply sending a message like “p innonate $5″ to pay for a beer at a bar?

Technorati Tags: Twitter, mobile, payment, sms

Today, Kelly Mooney posted a great article about Zappos and Twitter: What is Zappos doing.

Technorati Tags: Zappos, Twitter

As you might have noticed, my blogging has trailed off recently as I’ve been spending more time with Twitter and other emerging and social media (specifically mobile which I presented on several times in April).

Twitter is one of the shiny toys in the web 2.0 toolbox that is picking up momentum, and one that I believe is worth discussing (and educating those in the dark). I attempted to compile some of the recent blog posts, videos and articles on Twitter.

You can check out my Twitter profile at http://twitter.com/dustinj

Thanks everyone in the Twitterverse for the great content. I referenced the sources in the presentation.

Check it out below and please post comments / feedback.

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Technorati Tags: Twitter, socialmedia, community, web2.0, Barkley