There are evangelists. There are haters. There are analysts and pundits alike arguing why it's the next big thing. There are detractors laughing it off.
There is lots of noise...and I mean *lots* of noise. Teenage girls sharing trivial bits about school. Some dude sharing a photo of what he had for lunch. Some self-aggrandizing, buzzword heavy marketing person trying to share his profound insights on why he's just that smart and ahead of the curve.
There are grand proclamations - the future! It's the future! Get with it! Hurry!
Sound familiar?
For those of us around during previous hype-cycles, it's pretty much exactly what was argued against blogs, and now those same arguments are being applied to Twitter.
Blogging eventually found its niche. The noise of Xanga and LiveJournal was soon ignored, and the media soon stopped basing its stories upon nonsense stats such as, "Seven new blogs are created every second - 3,000% growth year over year!!!"
Soon the power of democratic publishing made easy enough for 'normal' people to use took hold. Crappy blogs fell away into the backwater of the web, but those that took the time to actually put something useful out there were rewarded with readers, pageviews, ad revenues, and a slew of PR people suddenly treating them like old friends.
What will Twitter's niche be? I can say this to be sure - it won't be the inane chatter that makes up much of the Twitterverse.
But, with the API being applied in new and ingenious ways every day, perhaps it will find its place.
Or not.
Such is the way of Silicon Valley.
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