Deconstructing the Addiction to Twitter
I couldn't have explained it better. It pretty much explains how I got hooked onto Twitter, but in my case, it was the use of Twitter at events (SXSW) that drew me in at first, then real-time search and finally the fact that many of my friends and colleagues were using it.
Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch explains the phenomenon:
The adoption cycle for Twitter is a bit strange. It goes something like this: Ever-increasing waves of hype, links, and attention bring in the newbies to Twitter.com where they get their first taste of Twitterdom. Some portion of those set up an account out of curiosity or a fear of being left behind. They try sending out a few Tweets, look around, get bored by the initial banality of the service and abandon it for other pursuits.
But that is not the end of it. A lot of them come back, either because they keep getting links from friends or keep hearing about it on TV or whatever, and then they slowly start to see the usefulness—a funny Tweet from a friend, a link to breaking news, a way to keep an eye on the general zeitgeist. Twitter is the kind of thing that is easier to experience than it is to explain. But it is an acquired taste and often requires repeated exposure before people get hooked. Once they do get hooked, there is no going back.
