Tweeted To The Max

April 29, 2009

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What happens when a little free word of mouth gets out of hand . . . let’s look at Twitter to find out.

Like the rest of the world, I’ve been hooked by the simplicity of Twitter.com, the newest social networking phenom. But lately, I’ve had the sneaking suspicion that Twitter was having a hard time keeping up with me. Increasingly, instead of being able to post a 140 character message, I’ve received a picture of a whale being lifted out of the water by little birds - the infamous Twitter “Fail Whale”. Cute, but annoying, and a sign that Twitter is drowning in its own success.

Twitter has caught fire and is now growing at the hard to imagine rate of 2,565 percent.

Twitter has become a household name, in no small measure due to celebrity shout-outs from the likes of Oprah, Ashton Kutcher, Larry King and and many other well know folks from the entertainment and corporate world. Kutcher became the first person to reach one million followers, followed less than an hour later by CNN. But it is the use by business for marketing purposes (ourselves included) who have made Twitter a sudden necessity for corporate communication. Even stogy old stalwart like AT&T are now happily tweeting away.

The question that so many are wondering is will Twitter be able to scale quick enough to match its success, or will the fail whale become a symbol for what can happen when your free business model suddenly leads to more success than you can handle?

-iTodd

Telecom Monthly is on twitter too, you can follow us at twitter.com/telecommonthly

Written by Todd · Filed Under Business, Internet