Twitter.com seems to be hogging all the social networking and web 2.0 news these days. Every other day, one reads/hears something or the other about Twitter in the newspaper or on TV. Ashton Kutcher and Oprah have taken Twitter to the mainstream. Oprah has already interviewed the Twitter bosses on her show and tweeted for the first time on the show. Now, she already has over a million followers who read every tweet of hers. Ashton Kutcher, the hollywood actor already has over two million followers. He is known to post witty and funny Twitter posts which everyone likes to read.

Dell computers has done over $2 million in sales from their Twitter only deals. They post special deals in their tweets. Isn't this something new? Two years back, no one would have thought of something like this. Some airlines like Jetblue have started interacting with passengers via Twitter. People who have garnered many hundred followers have started selling ad space. On the background image of their profile, any image advertisement can be displayed for a certain period. One or two companies have begun ad agencis on these lines. Twitter.com has been experiencing the fastest growth these days because everyone worth their salt is jumping on the bandwagon.

Many many websites have started to offer something or the other for the community of users. Some are offering custom Twitter backgrounds for a price, while some are doing it for free. There are sites offering picture uploading, url shortening, creation of polls, desktop apps, mobile apps, etc. Someone has also connected a few plants with wires, and now plants have also started tweeting. Can you believe it? The funny part is that the main website itself has no advertisements. They aren't generating any revenues, at least it looks like that. But the company is still valued around a billion dollars. It has been in the top hundred websites of the world since a long time now. Lets wait and see where the phenomenon leads us.

Twitter- Why Has It Succeeded?

Why should Twitter succeed? Facebook and Myspace were already there with many other social networks competing for eyeballs. Throw in social bookmarking sites and we thought that nothing more was needed as far as online networking was concerned. But then came Twitter and changed all the equations. It made everyone rush to see what was happening on twitter and why.I think that the limit of 140 characters gave a unique appeal to twitter in the beginning. It is like- you use a soap because of its perfume and not because it washes well! Because of the limit in characters, there was no way one could write something that was confusing. Nobody had the time to read long posts on the blogs anyway. So twitter saved all of us from boring and lengthy conversations on blogs. We could open our page and see what was new quickly. So with Twitter if you follow somebody, you are immediately told about what the other person wants to say. Please read further in part two of this article series.