The Steve Rubel Lifestream

1. twitter's success is based on the wisdom of the language ( http://gaggle.info/miscellaneous/articles/wisdom-of-the-language ) -- twitter basically means "happy to be marketing" -- and jaiku DOESN'T (and neither does friendfeed -- why not go to Times Square and ask 100 people what "friend feed" means? might be similar to Google's Q re "browser" [ http://gaggle.info/post/181/interlude-browsa-browsa-browsa ] ;)

2. twitter isn't building "their community"(which used to be about "twitter",-- in other words: marketing). Instead, they're trying to replace it with Hollywood (my guess is that they're hoping someone with Hollywood budgets will buy them ;).

3. I doubt that twitter will "pay off" -- it's too easy to simply find websites that are more relavant to their SPECIFIC interests (twitter is too "one-size fits-all"). I think old people NEVER got "narrowcasting" -- but for millenials, it could easily become a trend (simply because they grew up with the web, and therefore have an "inkling" that the www is PHLAT ["pretty hyper, local and topical"] ;)

4. Most generally: Twitter has LITTLE or NOTHING to do with technology -- in fact: the POOR technology is perhaps even a LIMITING FACTOR.

5. Twitter is quite closed off. Dave Winer will tell you this ad infinitum, so I think I don't need to say much about this -- but here's an example: where is my archive of tweets? (it seems that it would be super-simple to offer users the ability to download an archive of their own contributions)

:) nmw