Twitter hype -- fact or fiction

Is all this hype about Twitter just a passing fad? By the time we discuss the topic, it will have evolved into something else...read on.

As I am relaxing around the house (and not in front of my computer screen), the cover of the Jun 15th Time Magazine (yep sometimes I turn to the glossy paper device as opposed to the screen and keyboard) caught my eye. There is great article by Steven Johnson about Twitter. The screen and keyboard version is at
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1902604,00.html. (Must read to get a better understanding of twitter.

What is interesting is that the article was probably written a few weeks before the Iranian problems, and the use of twitter by Iranians to beat the news blackout. He discusses what is sometimes termed Goverment 2.0 -- how the people can participate in government with the use of Web 2.0 -- with the closing sentence of a paragraph, " I wonder if I could use that [Twitter] to start a political uprising. ". Usually it takes a few years for a futurist's predictions to become reality.

Nice history of twitter

Bobbie Johnson of The Observer (U.K.) does a great job using the current twittered events in Iran to segway into a well detailed history of the service.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jun/21/observer-profile-twitter-internet.

3 years is an eternity in the technology world.