All A-Twitter

Are you the latest Twit to jump on the bandwagon? For the first time ever, that question is not the least insulting as a Twit refers to someone with a Twitter account. Twitter, the micro-blogging site created by Jack Dorsey when he was a student at Cornell University, has finally caught on with residents of the Klang Valley. We’re a little behind as usual—Twitter launched in beta mode in March ‘06—but the good news is that we’re catching up, and fast. Twitter is the third-largest social network in the world, preceded only by more established sites like Facebook and MySpace. It boasted a 1,382% in growth as reported by Nielsen in February 2009. No wonder the Goliath of social networking Facebook is worried—no prizes for guessing why their new look is so reminiscent of Twitter (the latter refused to sell to Facebook last year). In December 2008, Twitterfacts.com announced that there were currently 3,000 active users in Malaysia. We’re willing to bet that more current statistics will reflect a bigger jump in numbers. Seems like people are interested in knowing what you’re doing in the moment, especially so if you’re a celeb like Briitsh comedian-actor Stephen Fry, singer-songwriter John Mayer or pop singer Lily Allen—all three have active Twitter accounts which are personally updated, offering fans insight into their lives like never before. Stalkers, your life has been made that much easier! Closer to home, our newly appointed Prime Minister also has a Twitter account under username NajibRazak – don’t get too excited though; it basically reads like his day’s itinerary. A more interesting account to check out is UMNO Youth’s leader Khairy Jamaluddin’s (www.twitter.com/khairykj) where he tweets about losing weight, amongst other issues. Did you also know that KL just hosted its first KL TweetUp on 27 March? Certainly a nod to Twitter’s growing popularity! Santini’s at KLCC hosted over 20 Twits who met up for the first time outside the 140-character limit of their accounts. Rohan Thomas (www.twitter.com/rohant), the organiser of KL TweetUp, observes that though Twitter users in Malaysia are currently limited to tech-savvy people, the momentum is building. “There are a lot of websites that are complementing Twitter and there are even more websites and applications that are using Twitter as a platform to build their applications, businesses and websites—which is awesome. Twitter is creating an ecosystem around itself that is not only satisfying the consumers but enabling ideas.