What, you mean like it did with email and the telephone? ;)

I think Twitter will have a lot of staying power. The magic of Twitter is that it remains very simple relative to, say, Facebook. There is a very bare-bones set of social-networking relationships: Basically, you can follow, and you can be followed. And following doesn't necessarily carry the social subtext of, say, your Facebook friend list, perhaps because it comes with far fewer consequences, ramifications, and options.

I find it interesting that my (now nearly middle-aged) generation has finally discovered Facebook en masse... and that the number one use case seems to be "keeping in touch with your classmates from high school and college". Facebook was originally designed for students, and that design permeates its DNA to the point that even people who've been out of school for twenty years revert back to Student Mode when they use it: It becomes an ongoing class reunion. But I don't think Twitter will work out quite the same. I think Twitter is more like the phone: In the hands of teens, it's a gossip tool. In the hands of corporate consultants, it's a business tool. In the hands of moms, it's a parenting tool. It's sufficiently abstract that people can find their own uses for it.

I mean, take me. I just don't understand what this fuss is about, anymore than a corporate Blackberry user understands the culture of middle-school text messaging. I don't use Twitter as a high-schoolish gossiping tool and I never have. I don't follow that many people, and I don't see a high volume of tweets. I don't tweet much myself, and I have very few followers. I don't talk to personal friends on Twitter. (Most of them are not there yet; As I said, a lot of them are only just starting to digest Facebook. They'll need another two or three years to discover Twitter.) I still don't understand what these #hashtags really do for you or where you go to see them. I'm the most boring, out-of-touch Twitter user in the world. But I still love it. So I don't think Twitter is going anywhere soon. Fads will come and fads will go, but the desire to communicate goes on.