Takeover of Twitter

When I first joined Twitter back in September, I had no idea what I was getting into.  I was participating in UGA's Connect Conference which featured a "social media boot camp" and many influential speakers from the world of public relations and social media.  One of the first things everyone did was set up a Twitter account, and although I had never heard of it I quickly got the hang of it and was live tweeting the conference in no time.  And so the obsession began...

It took me a few months to really get into it, but once I started following all of my PR friends (they seemed to be the only people who knew about it) from classes I got hooked.  It was an easy way to communicate with everyone and as addicting as Facebook.  I also started following PR professionals and news services, thus turning Twitter into an educational tool as much as anything.  But while Twitter became immensely popular with the PR people I knew, my "normal" friends still had no idea what it was.  I can't begin to tell you how many times I had to explain Twitter, and even once I did I usually got blank stares or questions along the line of... "so what's the point?".  

Fast-forward to now, almost a year later.  My "normal" friends from other majors have started popping up on Twitter.  It's all over the news.  I'm even doing Twitter searches at work as part of a daily monitor.  When did Twitter become cool? My friends that didn't understand it three months ago and thought it was weird/"stalkerish" are now jumping on the bandwagon! It's funny to see these social media trends evolve, and it's even funnier to tell my previously skeptical friends, "I told you so!"

A year ago, Facebook was the hottest thing in social media with people my age, and started the "stalker" element that Twitter has continued.  Everyone has had the experience of starting to tell their friend something they did over the weekend, only to be cut off by "I know, I saw your pictures on Facebook."  Now it's not so much this as, "Yea, I saw your Tweet about that." Is Twitter becoming more popular than Facebook?

According to this article on TechCrunch, Facebook is still "worth" much more than Twitter, and therefore has a bigger following and more popularity.  However, I can't help but wonder if in a year from now Facebook will be long gone (like Livejournal... anyone remember that craze?) and Twitter will still be around.