Posts from — August 2009

It’s easy to handle success in installments. But when is comes upon like a cascading wave, things go completely out of hand. Twitter has apparently gone in one and a half years from 1 million users to 44 million users. That’s not growth, it’s a nightmare. It’s wonderful for a musician who sees a song go from complete obscurity to being the most downloaded song of all time. But when you have a service that people thought was only slightly better than an ego trip go on to become a real-time news breaker (Iran riots anyone), things can go out of hand.

I know people pray for that kind of success. Because the twitter obituaries about information overload have already begun. How can anyone ‘follow’ 3000 people and make any sense of the conversation. Even if they spent just 10 minutes a day doing it. Twitter has made the fastest transition from pointlessness to red hot to has been faster than any other ’success story’. Here’s hoping that it doesn’t end in a whimper.