Disruptive Conversations

Twitter published some truly amazing stats:

Twitter users now send more than 140 million Tweets a day which adds up to a billion Tweets every 8 days—by comparison, it took 3 years, 2 months, and 1 day to reach the first billion Tweets. While it took about 18 months to sign up the first 500,000 accounts, we now see close to 500,000 accounts created every day

Today it's hard to wear a PR/marketing had and NOT think about the impact Twitter has had within the communications world. It has fundamentally changed so much about the tools we use and, together with Facebook, the ways in which many of us now communicate. Remember RSS readers? Remember email? Remember all those tools-by-nameless-startups-that-have-since-died? Now, so many of us get our headlines from Twitter... and it's become a way in which we communicate. Admittedly, I'll often send someone a direct message on Twitter before I'll send them an email or even call or SMS them.

Watching what's happening in the news lately... whether it's been the Japan quake, the leadership change and protests in Egypt or the the chaos unfolding now through the Middle East... Twitter has been a source of info for all of those major events. Beyond the major events, of course, Twitter's also been a way to stay in touch about all the mundane things happening around us and in our lives.

All in 140 characters or less.

And while the Twitter, Inc., of today has done some funky things lately and is still seeming to struggle with that wee little question of a business model and how to grow its ecosystem without alienating its developers... it is a good day to pause and say "Happy Birthday" to Twitter.

I joined Twitter on October 24, 2006 (per http://twittergrader.com/go/tweetingsince/ ) after Chris Brogan mentioned it to a bunch of us in an email or somewhere... and Twitter has certainly become a part of my daily communication flow ever since... it's been amazing to see the growth and evolution of the medium.

With 400 employees and a MUCH bigger marketing budget, Twitter did put out this video today - to which Frederic Lardinois had this interesting viewpoint - "What Twitter’s 5th Anniversary Video Tells Us About Its Future". As I said above, Twitter, Inc., has some interesting challenges ahead of it. Meanwhile, here's the video:

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