There is a terrible affliction spreading slowly in some digerati circles and it’s called Twitter fatigue. It tends to creep up slowly on people but eventually means their previous enthusiasm for Twitter is leached away.

So why is this happening to some people, myself included? I think ironically some people’s over-enthusiasm can be the cause for others loss of interest or even annoyance at Twitter. Why people feel the need to Twitter every trivial piece of information is a little beyond me surely they have better things to do…surely?

I do think it does depend on your use of Twitter too. If you are just checking your Twitter feed regularly or using the numerous Twitter applications available to filter the incoming information maybe you stand a chance against the tsunami of useless Tweets. If you use Twitter’s built in filtering and have Tweets coming straight to your mobile I think you’ll get tired of your text tone very quickly.

Paul Bradshaw has an excellent post on the OJB giving a wide range of information about the best use of Twitter. It does have a slant for journalists however as I would expect Journalists to be following a great deal of sources, a guide for help them might help the rest of the Twitterverse.

After cutting off Tweets to my mobile a few weeks ago I think maybe it’s about time I reviewed the alternatives to make my Tweetlife more manageable.

Twitter Japan has launched and it has one thing that we don’t see over here - adverts!

So Twitter are trying the old tried and tested advertising model to bring in some cash. Lets just hope it brings in enough for them advertising on the site and they don’t need to spam everyone with advertisements to their mobile phones! That would kill Twitter dead in no time at all!

UPDATE: Gary Andrews has posted with more details about the current media attention Twitter is receiving and also has some wise words about how companies should approach what may be a new media for them.

I’ve discussed why I think certain social media apps hit the mainstream rather than staying on the side lines of digerati use.

The BBC dot.life blog has posted about how Twitter seems to have become the flavour of the month in the media at the moment. However the same opinion as mine seems to be through this post - that Twitter just isn’t going to appeal to your common or garden user. 

Also there is an additional argument that the Twitter business model isn’t going to stand up long term. I have to say I can’t quite see how it’s lasted so long now I think about it. Advertising clearly isn’t in the equation so where are they getting the cash from? Let me know if I’ve missed something!

I hate to say it but it looks very reminiscent of some of the online companies at the end of the dot com boom. Money is getting tighter at the moment so make sure you have a cast iron business plan or your bubble is going to burst!

So Twitter’s time is now - will they take advantage of the current higher profile and can they get the money in to keep it going?

The post also mentions Ning - a social media site that allows you to create your own social networks. Looks interesting might have to delve deeper. Anyone got any experience of Ning?

There are loads of social media applications floating about in the vastness of the Internet. Most will disappear into obscurity but a select few will hit the mainstream and will become a household name.

Now I must separate my interpretation of popular and mainstream. Facebook, MySpace and Bebo can truly claim to be mainstream purely from the perspective that they are heavily used by many varying groups of people. Generally speaking here mainstream needs to include people who aren’t just linked with technology and the Internet in some way. This is not to say that these people don’t use these applications of course (although there is another post to come here about the relative coolness to popularity of social media within some quarters). Quite often however people involved with online industries are aware of many more social media tools than Joe Public and this is where the popular social media applications come in.

Twitter is a good example of a popular application that hasn’t as yet gone mainstream. There are many evangelists of Twitter including colleagues of mine and a large number of the Birmingham Bloggers however I’m not sold that Twitter will be able to go mainstream. Sorry guys.

So back to the original question - why the difference? I think this purely has to be judged from the perceived advantages to people over existing technology. Technologists (if that’s a good term to cover them) are always interested in the newest technology and for the most part will try out far more applications than your average Internet user. They are also to a certain extent likely to be more forgiving of growing pains within a service. Your average user is more likely to be inpatient and want to see instant advantages without a lot of hassle and what’s more they want to feel like it something completely new otherwise why bother?

Going back to the Twitter example I can see some excellent uses for the system even for people outside of the technologists camp (thanks to Mark and Kev here for the discussion on Friday). One of Mark’s examples was Universities using Twitter as a broadcast system for cancelled lectures or similar. Certainly Twitter could handle this well but the issue here is that the current user-base isn’t large enough for this to be an effective answer. Now Universities could insist that students are registered for Twitter and have tweets sent to their mobile phones in much the same way as I was required to regularly check my emails for announcements (as reminded by Mark such a long time ago - cheeky get). However there are a couple of missing links here in my opinion.

Firstly someone has got to be enthusiastic enough about the service to sell this to colleagues to even get to the point of deployment. Secondly and most importantly they’ve got to evaluate the additional hassle to get students to register (and chase the ones that don’t). Now again Mark stepped in to say that this could be bundled into the various induction activities which is true. But deep down I know for the most part that this is a lot more long and drawn out process than just taking the student’s mobile number (that is probably already known from enrollment) and using an SMS service to send announcements direct.

Of course I’m sure there will be exceptions to the rule from people particularly enthusiastic about a service but generally speaking there must be a major perceivable benefit to the end user. For this reason many applications remain used by a niche group.

I’d be interested to see other people’s opinions (possibly to change mine) not just about Twitter but also other applications currently not mainstream. Although I would be interested in any suggestions for Twitter uses that might swing my opinion.

As usual I’m bound to change my mind a couple of months down the road and if I do Mark will be waiting!