Twitter got its start at the SXSW festival in Austin, TX in 2007. Created originally for intracompany project streaming, the little tool was a huge hit right out of the gate, adopted by exponentially growing numbers of users who saw the potential in the simplicity of the tool for network building.

Robert Scoble was an early adopter of the service, which rapidly reached usage volumes that stretched the little start-up company’s resources to the breaking point. With over 20,000 followers, a novelty in the beginning of the service, Robert’s conversations with the Twitterverse often led to server crashes and slowdowns from the enormity of the group response. This in turn led to such humorous sites as FollowCost, which measures your annoyance factor on Twitter in milliscobles.

One of Twitter’s quirks is the use of cartoon animals to represent different status levels on the site. The working twitter gets a happy fat bird, an Owl arrives to signify maintenance, and of course, the mighty Fail Whale appears whenever the site is completely down for any length of time. Over the course of 2007 and part of 2008, users saw the Fail Whale more often than not, yet still they didn’t jump ship to the many “me too” services that started cropping up like Plurk, Kwippy and others.

Not only did Twitter users not jump ship, they embraced the Fail Whale as a concept. It has become part of standard web lingo to say something has Fail Whaled. You can get Fail Whale apparel, Fail Whale plush dolls and Fail Whale Pale Ale gets bandied about as a beer possibility often. What makes Twitter so special that it deserves this kind of brand loyalty even in time of crisis?

Quite simply, it connects us. It is deceptively simple to use Twitter to create networks numbering in the thousands, and generate real conversations with them. Twitter also achieves what all other Web sites and applications like it have tried and failed: it brings the connections off line. Somehow, the ease of Twitter and the ability to find and cultivate connections with people far and wide has given rise to TweetUps, event planning, friendships, marriages, support in time of crisis like arrest, news reporting, and more.

It is this bridge between the real and the online worlds that helped Twitter reach its billionth Tweet this week, with nary a Fail Whale in sight for months. Heck, it didn’t even crash during one of the most well attended elections in recent history, with users live Tweeting it all over the world. So kudos, Twitter, on surviving and growing. Now about that business plan…

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(Did you know that you can follow many of the Blorge authors on Twitter? We can be found at: Leslie Poston, John Pospisil, Dave Jeyes, Matt Jansen, Susan Wilson, Erna Mahyuni, Triston McIntyre)

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 at 1:09 pm under Social Media.

Read more entries by Leslie Poston.
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