I always wondered if Twitter would make it to the mainstream. I wasn’t sure if it would. Most people were too busy “poking” each other on Facebook or stalking lil’ kids on MySpace. But, it made it…and I’m a bit surprised to be honest.

Twitter just hit the one-billion tweets milestone today. Its not official or anything. The number of tweets were being counted by a 3rd party site called GigaTweet. Twitter might have hit this milestone long time ago since we don’t know when GigaTweet started counting. But, at least we know that we have more than a billion tweets.

You know Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart? Well anyone with a TV knows them. So, they were talking about Twitter on Indecision 2008. That probably got the whole “Twittosphere” twittering. Colbert and Stewart? They like took Twitter to the next level that day. Now the average Joe knows about Twitter and probably even started using it (or at least gave it a shot).

What really convinced me that Twitter got into the mainstream was when I was seeing this presentation by a few folks from a local tech company at my school. They were talking about Facebook, MySpace, Xbox Live, etc. And then they mentioned something that really surprised. Guess what it was? Yeah, it was Twitter.

I was like “Woah! WTF! They know about Twitter? They don’t look like the type of people who would use Twitter. WOAH! Holy shit! That means little birdie made it to the mainstream.” I was really happy for Twitter actually. Its a great, unique idea and its pretty useful too. It deserves to be more popular than Facebook (not kidding).

Well Twitter just took its first step into the mainstream. I’m not sure if it will be as popular as Facebook. It might. It might not. Who knows. But, it sure is on the right path and its getting more popular everyday. Until then follow my tweets!

Are “social sites” like music? Yes, I’m asking YOU.

By social sites, I mean social networks, social news, social bookmarking, micro-blogging, etc. I’ve been thinking and that question just popped up. Well lets try to find an answer.

When a song gets pretty popular, what do we do? We play it on the radio, listen to over and over again, tell our friends about it and listen to it a few more times. The band (or the singer) is glad that everything’s going perfectly and the album was a great success. But, what happens after a few weeks or maybe months? Doesn’t the song feel overplayed? Don’t we get sick and tired of it? Don’t we start to hate the song? Don’t we just move on?

Are you starting to figure out why I’m comparing these? I personally would say that social sites are a lot like music. They’re both fads. But, know what? Music is actually a lot better than social sites. I don’t know if I can call music a fad because we do move on after a song (or the album) gets overplayed, but we also go back to it after some time. Whether its months, years or decades.

But, what about social sites? Do you think we will ever go back to an old site? Do you think you’ll ever go back to a site that was once popular years ago? Do you think we’ll start using it again because it once had cool features? Music lives forever. Want an example? How about Led Zepplin?

Remember MySpace? Friendster? Do you think you’ll go back to use them? They were once really, really popular. Well MySpace still is, but Facebook took over. Plus I would say that Facebook is also going a bit dead. Like when it first went popular, people at school were talking about and were like going crazy about it. Now, no one even mentions it. They still use it, but its not that cool anymore.

Sucks to be a social site. They’re like toys. You play with it, get bored, throw it away and start playing with a new one.

Image by Janneke Hikspoors.

So, I’ve recently turned into a social media junkie. I signed up for Twitter, Plurk, FriendFeed, etc. A lot of sites. Takes a lot of precious time to check out each one of them (for updates). Oh crap! But don’t worry Socialthing! is here to make life a bit easier for us.

So, what is Socialthing! going to do for us? Well its like FriendFeed. You open an account, connect to the sites you use and your friends see the updates on Socialthing!. And you can see theirs. Sweet, huh?

Now this could save a hell of lot of time. I’ve been using Socialthing! for a few days now and I like it. Right now, you can only connect to a handful of sites, but they’re working on it. Oh you wanna know which sites you can use with Socailthing!:

• Brightkite
• Delicious
• Digg
• Facebook
• Flickr
• Guitar Hero (WTF? Why this?)
• Last.fm
• Ping.fm
• Plurk
• Pownce
• Seesmic
• Twitter
• Vimeo
• YouTube

Pretty good, right? They also let us vote on which site we want to see next. I voted for SU and Technorati. SU is the more important one though. Oh did I mention that Socialthing! was bought by AOL like yesterday?

Its in private beta right now. But, I got only 2 invites for you guys. The first 2 commenters gets them. Have fun!

Ever wondered if Twitter was the best or if it was Plurk? Well I did and I’m sure a lot of you did too. So here’s the ultimate showdown for Twitter and Plurk! Any ideas on who’s going to be the winner? Lets find out.

The looks

Looks are important. It works as a magnet. Well Twitter and Plurk both have a nice design. But, I like the Plurk layout over Twitter. I like the whole timeline idea. Its very unique, makes it easier to find your friend’s plurk and of course, the plurks show up in a chronological order (left: newest & right: oldest). While Twitter’s layout is a bit messy. I’m talking about the place where you see all your friend’s tweets.

Profile Customization

Plurk lets you customize your profile using CSS (but you need to wait until you get 25 Karma) and Plurk also comes with themes that you can choose from (noob-friendly!). Twitter doesn’t have that and you just get to choose what colour you want where (ex: background, sidebar, etc). And of course, both of them lets you upload your own picture for the profile.

So, yeah Plurk is both good for starters and experienced users (who knows CSS). You can really customize your Plurk profile while Twitter only lets you choose colours and a background picture (not so good).

How easy is it to make friends?

It’s really, really easy to make friends on Plurk. There’s a page with random users and you can just add them (if you find them interesting). It doesn’t take a lot of time and effort. Getting friends on Twitter is a bit hard. I got 57 friends on Plurk and 8 on Twitter. That explains a lot, huh?

How many friends reply/comment?

I just started using both Plurk and Twitter a few days ago. So, I don’t have a lot of loyal friends. But, I do get a few comments on my plurks while I got only one reply on Twitter.

Privacy options

Yeah this one’s for you privacy freaks. I don’t really care who sees my plurks or tweets (since they’re not personal). Okay there is a privacy option on Twitter that lets you choose to allow the people you follow see your tweets, only. Plurk has a bit more privacy options. You can setup who can view your plurks and who can search for you on Plurk.

Private Messages

Private messages are the messages you want to send to one specific friend. On Twitter you can send private tweets only to your mutual friends. On Plurk its looking a lot better. You can choose to send plurks only to your friends or a few specific friends. Great, huh? Plurk wins this round.

Incoming traffic

Yeah this one’s for the people looking for some traffic from micro-blogging. Well like I said I just started using them few days ago and I pretty much stopped using Twitter. I did get a bit more traffic from Plurk then Twitter. But, when I compared how many friends I have on Twitter and Plurk to the number of visitors coming from them, I saw that Twitter was more efficient.

Random features/things

• You can disable comments on Plurk.
• You write in 3rd person on Plurk most of the time (ex: th13rteen [thinks] if blogging about twitter and plurk will be good?). Awkward!
• You can tweet from your cellphone on Twitter.

So which one is the best?

Twitter: If you already have friends using it, if you have a nice community following you everywhere or if you’re successful on the web like Darren Rowse or Michael Arrington. And if you’re looking for some traffic!

Plurk: If want to micro-blog for fun, want to make a few buddies, be a bit more personal and build a profile.

Right now I’m using Plurk. I kinda stopped using Twitter, but I’ll put a bit more effort into it. So, I’ll be using them both with Ping.fm. I need to post a bit more links on Twitter than Plurk (that’s what everyone seems to be doing on Twitter).

So, go ahead and join Twitter and Plurk. And don’t forget to add me: Twitter & Plurk.

To the readers

So what do you think? Which one do YOU like better? Tell us about it. And hey, don’t forget to subscribe via RSS or email for more like this!