Has Twitter Gone Mainstream

People have thrown the question “Has Twitter gone mainstream?” out in the open lately. This got me to think about the answer long and hard. Has Twitter really gone mainstream?

Looking at how people, businesses and influential celebrities jumped into this Web 2.0 tool, one cannot avoid to ask this question. Is Twitter really the most dominant of all micro blogging tools available out there?

Why don’t we start off with how the dictionary defines the term mainstream:

mainstream (noun)

–The principal or dominant course, tendency, or trend. ex. the maintstream of American culture.

If you’re going to take this into account, you can already say that Twitter is already mainstream. It’s got millions and millions of users and the number keeps increasing every passing hour. It’s so popular that it is no longer limited to private individuals posting on their personal Twitter account anymore. Even businesses have jumped into the bandwagon and keep their own Twitter accounts.

Various applications like games, searches, polling, pledging, and many more have been created to cater to Twitter users’ other needs. It has evolved from a simple micro blogging site into something so much more. Some people would say that it’s already a culture. But I can’t be too sure of that.

Again, although Twitter’s following is far behind that of Facebook‘s or MySpace‘s, the fact that it’s in the top 3 social network sites of 09 means that a lot of people have signed up for Twitter accounts.

Personally, I think that Twitter’s gone mainstream. If not by the number of tweeters it has, but by the fact that it has become so commonplace that people use it for just about everything.

But hey, if you think otherwise, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Don’t hesitate to share your ideas on this matter over at the comments section. Let’s talk about your ideas on this matter, too.

All Aboard The Micro-Message Bus (techcrunch.com)
Study: Twitter users young, wireless, on other social sites (news.cnet.com)
Compete, ComScore and Quantcast Show Facebook US October Traffic Up, MySpace and Twitter Traffic Down (insidefacebook.com)

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Tagged as: facebook, Micro-blogging, MySpace, online communities, Social Media Tips, social network, Twitter, web 2.0, World Wide Web

reyna elena

advertisers are no on twitter. that's a sign.
reyna elena

Ooops! "ON TWITTER" hehehe
Elizabeth B.

I think Twitter has only become main stream in certain niches. For example, marketers use twitter to follow other marketers. However, from what I've seen, clients of marketers don't seem to follow as much. One question to think about would be, although I'm on twitter and have followers, are these followers people who will help my business and who I can help through my tweets?
Rob Angeles

I agree! Though there are tools out there to filter noise, getting targeted acquaintances is kinda hazy with Twitter. I too have so many followers but only a small percentage interact. For businesses, this is one of the questions they have in mind in using social media tools. What value will it give them?

But there are..