The question of whether or not Twitter will be a mainstay in the internet world is a difficult one to answer. I think, though, this is the wrong question to ask. No one can really predict the future, so we can't know today who will win the 2009 World Series, and we surely cannot predict what will be the most popular sites on the internet in 1, 2, 3 or 5 years time. Sure, there is good reason to believe Google will maintain its position atop the internet hierarchy, but that tells us little about a relative newcomer to the internet scene, like Twitter. If we abandon this idea of trying to predict the tweeting birdie's future, as an organization or website, and instead focus on the influence it has had on communication over the internet, our inquiry is sure to yield much more worthwhile results. We can then see how it has changed things. The way it has impacted how the internet is used is something that has great significance, regardless if the site is still around in a couple of years.
One thing that I think Twitter has contributed to is making the blogging culture of information sharing much more accessible to a greater portion of the general public. Actively searching for blogs is not an activity that a large percentage of the population is inclined to do. The process takes time, and most people are not willing to devote time to an activity unless they have confidence that it will bear fruit. Unfortunately, this sets up a chicken and egg problem: you are not going to be motivated to find new blogs unless you have the experience of reading engaging blogs, but you are not going to be reading engaging blogs unless you have put the effort to find these blogs. Twitter helps people get over the hump of "information-community" participation because of its simplicity. Individuals can follow the "mini-blogs" of individuals they find interesting, learn of the individuals that they find interesting, and before too long, with very little effort expended, a network of individual mini-blogs is developed. The two key elements here are how short the Twitter updates are, and the ease of access to all Twitter "mini-blogs" because of their central location at twitter.com.
The idea of making the "blogging culture" more accessible also functions from the other side of the things: Twitter makes it much easier for people to contribute information in a blog-like manner. No longer do people have to go through the process of spending minutes or hours creating an article on a conventional blog in order to participate in a open online conversation. Individuals can in seconds share a small piece of information that has been on their mind, or link to other pieces of information that are online.
So what? What is the overall significance of these developments? In principal, the main change is that no longer will blog-like information sharing be confined to the relatively small community of journalistic individuals. More people are becoming accustomed to sharing pieces of information with the general public that in the past they would have kept to themselves or shared with their off-line contacts. Sure, a considerable amount of what is going to be shared is useless information (see the excellent Twouble with Twitter video on YouTube for an excellent demonstration of this). However, many people are sharing interesting thoughts they have and even more so providing links to internet resources that they find engaging. Furthermore, if people want to develop a strong following of their own (as most people do) there is a strong incentive to post worthwhile information, in order keep people interested.
Regardless of whether Twitter itself stands the test of time, a large number of people have now become accustomed to sharing information with the general public online, because of this phenomenon. This certainly has augmented media use habits, and has changed the way people use the internet.
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