Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Twitter's Popularity Soars

Twitter growth surges 131% in March and is quickly revolutionizing mass communication.What are the reasons for such rapidly growing popularity among its users? Andrew McAfee discussed this phenomenon in one of his classes and they concluded on a combination of the following attributes:
  • Concise
  • Hyperlinked
  • Persistant
  • Searchable
  • Asynchronous
  • Assymetric
  • Largely public, but with a private option
  • Categorizable
  • Open
  • Universal
  • Monolithic
Finally they were trying to understand the meaning of the combination of attributes listed above. One of his students argued as follows: "Twitter's not a substitute for anything we used to do. It's a combination about 17 things we used to do." So what are the most innovative attributes and characters about Tweet and Twitter? Is it an innovative and appropriate tool for usage in science?