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Twitter's Secret Weapon: Audience

How is Twitter able to maintain such a large, loyal audience despite persistent service outages? TechCrunch's Gregor Hochmuth argues that the mini-blogging service reaches a wide variety of users who would never dream of starting a blog or using an RSS reader. There's also something about releasing a tweet and knowing your friends will receive it-even if it doesn't exactly work that way (in actual fact, anyone who wants to can follow you on Twitter, whether that person is your friend or not).

But from a user's perspective, those receiving your messages are people you know, people who care enough to "follow" you. This, Hochmuth says, is the secret to Twitter's success: The moment you send a message, not only do you have an idea about who's receiving your message, you also know exactly who's online and capable of responding to your message instantly.

"Twitter works and enjoys such strong attachment because it provides real-time access to a well-defined audience," Hochmuth says. "The backlog of all previous tweets is a guarantee of permanence (you can even search it) and you can catch up on it anytime," making Twitter a powerful tool for creating cohesion among highly-targeted, personalized networks. These are powerful connections-there has to be a business model in there somewhere. Right?

Read the whole story at TechCrunch »

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