Twitter: Maybe It's Not Just Me

An interesting, and rather surprising, story today in the Online Media Daily tells me - as the headline has it - that "Twitter Hasn't Reached Mainstream."  The story cites some new statistics from Hitwise Intelligence that place Twitter #439 among all social networks and forums.

OK. Maybe I'm going to reveal my total un-coolness here. But that "mainstream" would include me, I fear.

I use Twitter, but I do so with the definite feeling that I don't quite, you know, get it. Now I don't use it (or want it) on my mobile phone, for example. I follow the service on my desktop where I do most of my work and on my laptop.

But I don't follow that many people and don't have that many following me. I have enough trouble keeping up with the few people that I do follow, some of whom appear to hit the send key on virtually any pretext. Sometimes the notes are interesting; too often, I fear, they're boring. Or drivel. The same may be said - absolutely and with an emphasis on the "drivel" - of my own tweets.

I suppose it's because I'm not using my mobile phone to track this stuff. I suppose that multi-platform and super-mobile ability is what sets Twitter apart. It's just that I can't see a whole lot of use for it, at least not for me personally.

But then, it took me a while to warm to Facebook. Maybe I'm not completely ineducable. Just too mainstream, for now at least, to give Twitter its due.