A Twitter Conundrum

So, this article on TechCrunch talking about Twitter user numbers in the US slowing down makes it onto Techmeme on Friday morning (UK time). It says:

Ever since last summer, Twitter’s growth in the U.S. has been stalling. But in October, the number of people who visited Twitter.com from the U.S. actually declined for the first time by 8 percent month-over-month. Estimates released today by comScore put Twitter’s domestic unique visitors at 19.2 million, down from 20.9 million in September.

But here is the thing - I read about it on Twitter on Tuesday for the first time I think - by today, as it gets on Techmeme, its old news. Old News! On Techmeme! Two years ago that would have been unthinkable.....

A 3 day difference in news is a huge arbitrage and valuable to someone I am sure. I was struck by what Heather Hampton of the UK Department of Health said of her experience of using Twitter to monitor scarememes about Swineflu, in that she had a good 10 days warning before a Twitter story finally broke in the Panic! Panic! mainstream media organs. So, whereas a few years ago the Dept would be caught on the back foot, they now have about a week to be prepared to counter the News Agenda. (She was speaking at Mashup Social Media 09, see our coverage here)

So for this reason I suspect Twitter - or whatever similar service succeeds it - isn't going away anytime soon. I've always seen it as an infrastructure layer, not a service layer thing and its architecture is just too darn useful to too many people.