The future of Twitter?
I was introduced to Twitter last summer at a dinner at Henrietta's Table in Cambridge by Ross Mayfield. I posted two or three notes using my Blackberry that evening and never did it again. I still receive SMS's from Ross on a regular basis, but …
Context & Ripple Effects
A week after mamamusings made the case for why Twitter matters, this post supplies the counterweight from inside the same circle: the author was introduced to the service by Ross Mayfield over dinner at Henrietta's Table in Cambridge, posted two or three notes from a BlackBerry that night, and never posted again.
The telling detail is what did not stop: Mayfield's regular SMS messages keep arriving regardless. The author is a lapsed poster but an active recipient, and that asymmetry — not enthusiasm — is the real open question about Twitter's future.
First-order effects
- The author's own usage log shows the split Twitter has to resolve at the top of the adoption curve: two or three BlackBerry posts at introduction, then months of silence as a read-only recipient of Ross Mayfield's SMS updates.
Second-order effects
- For early evangelists like Mayfield, every lapsed poster who still receives SMS keeps the audience growing even as the active-posting base stalls — reach decoupling from participation.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds across the early adopter circle, Twitter's fate depends less on recruiting posters than on whether passive SMS readers find reason to return — a service sustained by asymmetric attention rather than reciprocal posting.
The trend: Microblogging's near-term trajectory turns on whether passively reached SMS audiences convert back into active posters.