I'm finally 5 by 5 with Twitter

It took me a long time to figure out Twitter. Frankly, I spent little time thinking about it. I was more or less obsessed with the housing market and the distinct possibility of an economic depression. I had eventually evolved to believing that we were doomed to relive the 1970s, not the 1930s, which is mostly a good thing.

Anyway, about Twitter... It seemed to me like you have to have a real sense of self-importance to really get into it. Way more than blogging, I think (or hope). So I dismissed it as a strange fad. But now that I think of it in the context of "The 70's Are Back :-/" I have found the analogue.

Twitter is the CB Radio for this generation. You can broadcast to friends and anybody who will listen. You can tell people how you are doing, when in the past you would have to hold all your thoughts inside. I suppose some people could snap under that pressure.

traffic stop+go on 405. safeway veggies r fresh. Going out for Chinese food at Panda Express. Just landed in L.A. Saw some cute shoes at the mall.

So, we have Twitter. If it's like CB, it will be huge, get some movie references, then fade into obscurity. Enjoy the ride.

Googling 'twitter cb radio' is a fun excercise. Here is a fun one from the results, dated April 28, 2009:
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2009/04/the_fickle_twit.php

When MySpace and Facebook were at the stage that Twitter is at today, their retention rates were, according to Nielsen, twice as high - and they've now stabilized at nearly 70 percent. Twitter's high rate of churn will, if it continues, hamstring the service's growth, says Nielsen's David Martin: "A retention rate of 40 percent will limit a site’s growth to about a 10 percent reach figure ... There simply aren’t enough new users to make up for defecting ones after a certain point. [Twitter] will not be able to sustain its meteoric rise without establishing a higher level of user loyalty."

CB Radio indeed.