Technology: Tracking the Twitter Trend

Twitter, which used to be riddled with some of the top technological journalists, has been taken over by mainstream celebrities. That's right, news anchors, singers, actors, and even Barack Obama are now among the top Twitter-holics. Is this a sign of things to come or is it just a fad?

Twitter, for those who don't already know, is a micro-blogging website where you can let people know what you're doing in 140 characters or less. What makes Twitter so popular? Well, according to their website, it's all about simplicity. People are always looking for ways to connect with other people and Twitter does just that. They ask just one question, "What are you doing?" and the answers can only be 140 characters in length. This is done via text messaging, instant messaging, via the web or via clients written specifically for use with twitter.

Why is the scope of the most popular twitterati changing from people like Kevin Rose (http://www.twitter.com/kevinrose/) and Leo Laporte (http://www.twitter.com/leolaporte/) to people like Britney Spears (http://www.twitter.com/britneyspears/) and Lance Armstrong (http://www.twitter.com/lancearmstrong/)? That's the question that I would love to have a solid answer to, but we can only speculate about the reasons. I think that a lot of it is because it's a way to promote the latest project that the celebrity is working on. This is especially true when it's not the celebrity themselves doing the Twitter updates.

Twitter is a great site, if you want to share quick updates with your friends or follow the updates of others, it's also a great way to get quick answers to questions, if you have a lot of knowledgeable followers as well. One of the great things about Twitter is the ability to interact on a quick basis, where as a traditional blog setting means that you have to sit down and write out your post, then wait for comments to come in after people find your post.

It's not just celebrities, however, that are using Twitter. During the Presidential campaigns, all of the major candidates had someone Twittering on their behalf. Barack Obama (http://www.twitter.com/barackobama/) is on Twitter, and according to the Twitterholic reports, he is the number one person when it comes to followers. Now, we know that due to security laws and such, Barack is not posting his own updates; in fact, his Twitter has not been updated since the day before the swearing in ceremony. Was he updating Twitter himself? Probably not, it was probably someone on his campaign team posting for him, but they were still real, legitimate updates.

What I wonder is whether the technological minded folks who made Twitter popular will stay there now or will they find somewhere new to move on to. Time will only tell. Until then, Tweet On.