Twitter Twops?

It has been six months since my last post, but I finally found something worth blabbering about. Why so long? The main reason is that the primary topic of my blog - AAA NCNU's social learning project - was shut down. With that gone, I couldn't think of anything else that I actually wanted to talk about. Those who know me personally know that I'm not exactly loquacious. But that's all beside the point. This morning I heard about Twitter's growth slowdown, and just had to put in my two cents.

According to that post, Twitter's growth in May 2009 suddenly plummeted from the phenomenal growth they had been experiencing (76.8% from February to March, 1382% annually) to a mere 1.47% from April to May. Growth, in this case, is measured by comparing the number of unique visitors to the site. And while people are still spending time on Twitter, this indicates that the site may have finally hit its plateau. I'm very curious as to what will happen over the next couple of months, but I can't help but wonder if the potential tweeters of the world have now all been tapped.

My feeling is this: Twitter is really only useful to a particular audience. That audience consists of Internet power users who have a constant connection to the Internet, who honestly believe they have something valuable to share, and who don't mind sorting through dozens to hundreds of other people's posts every day. Obviously, that is a finite audience. Sure, Twitter is cool, but it's definitely not for everyone. There are a lot of bloggers within the social learning space who would argue at this point that I just don't get it, and that almost everyone should be using Twitter. I disagree. Twitter is just a tool, and like any other tool, it is not necessarily useful to everyone.