There are only a few users with more than a million followers on Twitter. A few of them might be flukes (Ashton Kutcher ?), but most are not. They are celebrities such as Britney Spears and Oprah Winfrey or popular media sites such as The Onion and New York Times. I call them “mega tweeters”.

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With due respect for all Twitter bashers (see here for an example), I would like to make a few comments in defense of Twitter.

I certainly agree that it is easy and tempting to flow with the hype, and internet bubble of late 90’s and recent real estate bubbles are good examples of that. Therefore, I am not going to suggest that Twitter is going to be next Google, though it’s important to note that nobody could have imagined that Google would threaten Microsoft so soon so fast. However, few would disagree that social media is here to stay. Very few understood blogging when it started, but today it has opened up the long tail of journalism. Video sharing has become a phenomenon in itself, and though Youtube is still struggling to make money, there is little doubt that it has opened up a new world of opportunities for wannabe artists, producers, journalists etc. I believe that micro-blogging is also going to create an impact that not many people can anticipate today. Read the full article »