The death of Twitter exaggerated again....

MG Siegler on VentureBeat seen on Techmeme re news of Twitter's death being somewhat exaggerated:

After all, this is the service that was basically unusable for a few months earlier this year, and came back stronger than ever. It’s also seen a number of challengers, ones that were arguably better and more feature-rich (Pownce, Plurk, etc) come along, but fail to match Twitter’s sustained popularity.

(Dave) Winer himself has been a huge proponent of one, Indeti.ca. But despite his and others best efforts, its growth (at least for its site) has not only stopped, it has basically fallen off a cliff the past few months.

.......

The problem with “Twitter killers” is that they don’t actually kill Twitter. Why is that?

It’s the users.

As in, Twitter has them. Sure, it can easily be argued that the so-called “early adopter” users aren’t all that important in the long run, but Twitter has been seeing some real traction among regular people outside the Silicon Valley echo bubble as well.

Actually, I think its more than just the users. I think its the structure of the Twitter comms networks itself. There is something about the unique combination of:

- Multimedia unified communications

- Asymmetric connections allowing it tp be used in a number of roles from broadcast to niche

- Limited message size

- (Just) enough IM and privacy functionality to move to 1-2-1 comms

- Exposing the API so that development of OTT services have kept up (and are appropriate to) user needs

That seems to make the service far more flexible than any of the others that have been touted as Twitter Killers, which are all built with more of a preconceived reason to exist. Twitter, in my view is more "pure comms", in that it makes no assumptions about the uses it gets put to. Personally, I think its emerging as the "2.0" equivalent to the old Telco holy grail, the Unified Comms System.

Update - as predicted, the death of Twitter was somewhat exaggerated - article in the WSJ suggests its on its way over the chasm, due mainly to its messaging flexibility:

But, like blogs and social-networking sites, Twitter is starting to cross into the mainstream, as a wide range of people find interesting uses for the brief notes.

Doctors are using Twitter to update patients about office hours. Local groups such as the Los Angeles Fire Department are using it to share details about service calls with interested residents, occasionally with graphic descriptions of the victims' conditions. And dozens of major companies, like computer maker Dell Inc., use Twitter to share deals and product news with people who sign up for the service.

(More on this in a later post, following some interesting discussions on Jabber and Transaction Messaging in general at Web 2.0 Expo)