In recent months, Twitter has got something of a beating from bloggers worldwide about frequent downtime, feature reductions and timeouts.
Originally, I was dismayed and somewhat (perhaps irrationally) angry at the ongoing Twitter problems, but strangely, and unlike many bad services in the past, I didn't drop Twitter. It was only after a long think about why I'm still on Twitter.
Then it hit me. I'm on Twitter still because of it's ease of use, the 3rd party tools around it, and the people I follow that encapsulate my interest.
Identi.ca is conceptually just as good, being an open platform, but there's something not quite as interesting as Twitter about it, and I guess it boils down to the myriad following Twitter has.
Twitter has gained a massive following, from bread and butter users, to businesses, government, and developers. Followers using the service remain closer to the individuals/
activist groups/
news outlets/
brands/
companies/
bands or whatever else they enjoy. Useful services have been built on it's API, which although suffering from Twitter's problems, is robust enough to accommodate development, giving back far more than Twitter itself and adding value to the community.
Think of all the services that revolve around or add to Twitter. There's
Summize (recently acquired by Twitter),
Tweetstats,
Twitterfeed, amongst many, many others. Through clever use of these tools, businesses can use Twitter to analyze
trends online, position themselves appropriately, and hear what people are saying about them.
These points are why people remain on Twitter, not just for the personal frippery, but for the relationships between individuals and business that can and are built on the system. It's not perfect, but it works. For now.
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