The next few months is potentially the make or break period for micro blogging social media application Twitter. Users of the tool have increased significantly in recent weeks as publicity has grown and awareness of the tool has increased accordingly.
Reports of Twitters use during the Mumbai terror attacks and a recent derogatory article by the mail online caused a major spike in Google searches for twitter and today its infrastructure creaked and crumbled under the strain as its users experienced down due to technical difficulties at twitter HQ. Twitter doesn’t make any money so there is minimal investment in infrastructure from its founder Evan Williams (creator of blogger which was sold to Google in 2003).
Twitter is due for even more increased exposure and coming weeks as it is set to be discussed by Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry on the return of The Jonathan Ross Show on Jan 23rd. Fry and Ross are users of the social application and are set to discuss other celebrity users.
This is likely to increase Twitter’s users and website traffic significantly in a short period of time and considering they are having issues with current levels I hope they are investing in new servers as we speak!
I current trends continue and further awareness can be gained Williams and his fellow board must be hoping for a quick sale to one of the big players with the ability to harness and monetise the Twitter traffic effectively or potentially tie Twitter in with existing social media tools.
But in order to do so Twitter will need to prove its stability over the next 1-3 months or it could be game over and a party like Google may just decide to build its own solution to take its place.
Its going to be a very interesting and important for Twitter and as a fan, I hope it survives and finds its buyer.
Pingback: Posts about Building Website Traffic as of January 9, 2009 | The Lessnau Lounge