Created Fri 2nd May 9:19am PDT by
nigeleccles
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Will the majority of the top 25 Twitterers be techies on May 2, 2009?
Current forecast: 52% chance

Combining all predictions, the current forecast is that this is 52% likely to happen (unchanged in last 1 day)
According to CNET Twitter has just signed a term sheet for another $15 to $20 million in funding. It is one of those fantastic "huge audience growth now, figure out the business model later" plays. Sometimes they work out (Google), sometimes they don't (IM) and sometimes it is just to early to say (Digg, Facebook, YouTube).
In commenting on the recent news Business Week columnist Sarah Lacy stated that Twitter was "on the verge of potentially going mainstream in a big way" (http://tinyurl.com/6nkato). That's a pretty strong prediction from a journalist and I follow a lot of them. However, where is the evidence that Twitter is even on the verge of hitting the mainstream in a small way? TechCrunch report that they have around 200,000 active users per week. Even among early adopter tech community Twitter isn't that widely used.
One demographic of the population that it has reached almost complete acceptance (and in some instances road to Damascus type conversions) is among bloggers and journalists. The value of Twitter to that community for finding stories, breaking stories and marketing is huge. Definitely worth the effort of downloading the app, building the friend list, un-following the 'social spammers' and the lost productivity of being distracted all day. For the mainstream it just doesn't pass the cost/benefit test.
If you check out Twitterholic (www.twitterholic.com) you will see that 20 of the top 25 Twitterers are part of the tech crowd. There are five who aren't (Obama (1), HotDogsLadies (7), CNN (8), TastyBlogSnack (12) and Stephen Colbert (24)) although all of them are very popular with the tech crowd. Here is my prediction: In a year's time the majority of the top 25 Twitterers will still be techies.
In commenting on the recent news Business Week columnist Sarah Lacy stated that Twitter was "on the verge of potentially going mainstream in a big way" (http://tinyurl.com/6nkato). That's a pretty strong prediction from a journalist and I follow a lot of them. However, where is the evidence that Twitter is even on the verge of hitting the mainstream in a small way? TechCrunch report that they have around 200,000 active users per week. Even among early adopter tech community Twitter isn't that widely used.
One demographic of the population that it has reached almost complete acceptance (and in some instances road to Damascus type conversions) is among bloggers and journalists. The value of Twitter to that community for finding stories, breaking stories and marketing is huge. Definitely worth the effort of downloading the app, building the friend list, un-following the 'social spammers' and the lost productivity of being distracted all day. For the mainstream it just doesn't pass the cost/benefit test.
If you check out Twitterholic (www.twitterholic.com) you will see that 20 of the top 25 Twitterers are part of the tech crowd. There are five who aren't (Obama (1), HotDogsLadies (7), CNN (8), TastyBlogSnack (12) and Stephen Colbert (24)) although all of them are very popular with the tech crowd. Here is my prediction: In a year's time the majority of the top 25 Twitterers will still be techies.
Make your prediction!
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Activity: H$1,949
Question suspends in 35 weeks
All questions are settled by Hubdub according to settlement info provided by the question creator.
Settlement details:
This will be settled according to a count of the number of tech bloggers, tech entrepreneurs and tech journalists that are in the top 25 of the Twitterholic list (www.twitterholic.com) taken at mid-day on May 2, 2009.
Suspend date: Sat 2nd May 2009 1pm PDT (35 weeks to go)
Initial likelihoods:
Yes: 50%
Action history:
Created Fri 2nd May 9:19am PDT by
nigeleccles
All questions are settled by Hubdub according to settlement info provided by the question creator.
Settlement details: This will be settled according to a count of the number of tech bloggers, tech entrepreneurs and tech journalists that are in the top 25 of the Twitterholic list (www.twitterholic.com) taken at mid-day on May 2, 2009.... read all
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score: 10
Technometria 1 week ago
of building out additional functionality in the micro-blogging space (what people have started to call the space that Twitter is in). The fly in the ointment, from my perspective, is the additional friction engendered by the need to subscribe to people
score: 10
CNET.com.au 2 weeks ago
Australian and European users of Twitter can no longer receive text message updates on their mobile phones, in a temporary move designed to keep the start-up's telecom bills down. Twitterers can still use the UK number,
score: 10
ZDnet Australia 2 weeks ago
Australian and European users of Twitter can no longer receive text message updates on their cell phones, in a temporary move designed to keep the start-up's telecom bills down. Twitterers can still use the UK number,
score: 10
Guardian Unlimited 2 weeks ago
Schofield Latest blog posts A-list blogger Robert Scoble has posted nine points.... As blogs have become mainstream (see TechCrunch etc) and mainstream media have started blogging (in my case, since 2001), the two areas have started to overlap. Bloggers
score: 10
Wired News 2 weeks ago
his tweet staffers, has risen to the top of the list in terms of number of followers on Twitter with around 56,000, and Digg founder Kevin Rose is in a close second. The report comes from a non-Twitter associated site, Twitterholic.com, that tracks the
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