In a recent analysis for TechDirt Insight Community I was looking at mobile social networking. Although Alexa comparisons leave something to be desired this Twitter vs Dodgeball reach comparison is pretty darn striking, and shows how the more “robust” Dodgeball has been crushed by Twitter. My take on what happened with Twitter is simple: Twitter rocked the SXSW conference last year as the key networking application for a large number of “alpha” onliners. This popularity has carried over as mobile networking moved into the techno mainstream.
It’s not clear to me if Twitter – or any similar application – will hit regular folks in the same way only Myspace really has done so far with Facebook as a distant second in total social networking. Myspace’s popularity stands in stark contrast to the way it is largely disparaged in much of the hardcore tech community where people will use Twitter and LinkedIn and to some extent Facebook, but would probably laugh out loud at somebody who asked them to check out their Myspace page.
Joe Duck 