Why Was Twitter Successful?

Why was Twitter successful? Why didn't other similar services match up? Why couldn't anyone else take the idea and do it better? Always wondered, but a discussion at work yesterday prompted some reading and this post.

A video by Jack Dorsey with a few takeaways from his experience creating Twitter.



But wait... the best one is here - a nice long discussion on this topic. Myriad facts and opinions from many different people. Found this informative and thought provoking.

From whatever I gathered, the most importnat factors I thought were:

• Came at the right time, when there were not many alternatives.
• Was of the right simplicity/complexity.
• Appealed to contributors. easy. Brevity promotes even trivial and incomplete thoughts to be presented without guilt or responsibility. Contributors dragged many followers.
• Was a cheap advertising medium, which many corporations embraced. They publicized and pulled in followers.
• Creators had the right influence to give it the initial publicity push.
• Focussed attempt to solve a definite narrow problem, and only that problem, well.