Brainnovate

Michael Arrington pointed out a new service this morning that I was not aware of for keeping tabs on what links get tweeted the most at any given time.

Twitturly is kind of like a Digg for Twitter. It takes a pulse of what the 1,000,000 or so Twitter users think is currently important by displaying a “Digg like” list of the most popular links. As links get passed around, they show up on the Twitturly radar, and get “voted” up the page. Arrington surmises this may help increase the editorial value of Twitter. In my opinion, services like this (there are others)-

1. Can help people quickly see what arguably the 1,000,000 “earliest adopters” think of various interesting new things out on the web. This is how Digg is supposed to work as well, but it has gained much broader acceptance and has become the target of spammers, etc.
2. Is yet another service that points towards Twitter winning the micro blogging platform wars- despite questionable service quality. As I mentioned in “Are Twitters Marketing Problems a Marketing Ploy?” - the best option out there is not always the winner.

A big problem I see right now is a general lack of numbers. Being a numbers/math guy I cannot look at something like this without considering the stats behind it. With a total sample of 1 million Twitter users, are there enough to really trust these results as “statistically reliable” of what the greater audience thinks? I tend to think not. But it is still an interesting way to see some new sites.

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Twitter was having issues again this weekend.  If you use it, you probably know that by now.  The service has been plagued by various availability issues since it’s inception.  The funny thing thing is that every time it goes down or has any hiccup, the blogosphere goes nuts.  Dozens (maybe hundreds) of bloggers swoop in and write posts about the service, its’ problems, and how great it is when it works right.

If you believe that no press is bad press, this could be a very good thing for Twitter.  Surely a faulty service can’t survive forever, but anyone who has studied business (or been in business) knows that the best quality product isn’t always the one that wins.

So I pose the question… are all the problems actually helping Twitter gain mass acceptance?  Every problem they experience brings tens of thousands of dollars worth of free press, and spreads their name further.  Its an interesting feedback effect, and surely one that can’t go on forever, but interesting to watch nonetheless.