In a previous post about ad:tech, I mentioned how I learned about NY Times' Facebook page from a twitter by Steve Rubel. I commented about this in the press room, and one of the reporters was surprised to hear that twitter was still around and active. I reflected back on hearing speakers at OMMA predict the demise of Twitter, Facebook and Second Life and it struck me that the standard technology adoption curve that we all hear so much about, may have a lot of interesting nuances.

One nuance that gets talked about a lot is the chasm that Geoffrey Moore talks about between the early adopters and the early majority. Perhaps Twitter is currently hiding in that chasm. Perhaps that chasm is tied to what happened at OMMA and other shows. Here is my proposed narrative for understanding a little of this.

As the innovators go out and try to convince people of a really cool new technology, and the early adopters start piling on, the laggards hear about this and try to convince everyone else that there isn’t really any value to the cool new technology. The innovators and the early adopters happily keep using the cool new technology. It keeps getting better and better, and then crosses a threshold where it becomes easy enough for the early majority to start using it and discover that the technology really is interesting.

This fits nicely with Twitter. Yes, us innovators and early adopters continue to play with it. Today, I received an email on the Second Life Educators mailing list, another gathering place for innovators and early adopters, talking about Twitter. Several twiterholics, myself included, came forward and talked about our experiences and the neat new tools that have come along to make twitter easier and more useful. Will it be enough to get Twitter to cross the chasm? Well, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, I’m following some new friends on Twitter, and even found a version of the the Twitter Life Cycle