Sure I could update both Pownce and Jaiku through Twhirl, but why?  I don’t go there to check replies, conversations or threads.  Through the conversation of tweets and DMs, Tim and I agreed that this smelled like a great blog post.  He beat me to the punch:

Is that enough to explain its success? I don’t know — but I’d love to hear what you think. Source: May the best product win? — Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

So what is it?  For me it’s all about Newton.  No, not the PDA, Sir Isaac.  Inertia and momentum.  Twitter started gaining huge amounts of momentum last year at SXSWi and by summer it became the de facto backchannel for tech events and conferences.  Sure Pownce and Jaiku came out and offered interesting things.  Pownce has groups, events, file sharing.  Jaiku lets me (as I just noted on FriendFeed) pull in other streams into my Jaiku stream.  None of those things keep me there.  I flirted with both services for a while (especially when Twitter was more than a tad wonky), but eh, Twitter kept pulling me back.

Bottom line the momentum and inertia that Twitter has built up means that, essentially, my friends are there.  The people I want to chat with (in 140 characters or fewer), the news I want to get (and blog), the cool people I keep meeting (way to many to mention here–and I’d surely forget someone), and just the other “stuff” that goes on (I’m not too sure about this colour wars things, but hey).

Take MS Office vs WordPerfect.  It was momentum and early marketshare that made this a battle over before it finished (I started with IE vs Firefox too, but I think the tide might be turning there).  MS Office isn’t the greatest set of tools in the world, but we all are forced to save things in DOC, XLS, and PPT format, why?  Because that’s what everyone else uses.  Send an OpenOffice doc and you’ll get emails back that “I can’t open this…”.  It isn’t better, it’s momentum.

Twitter got the momentum (and mindshare) early and has kept it.  In spite of its failings, we stick with Twitter.  Can it lose the lead and be replaced?  Oh certainly.  Look at Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel.  Right now, though, Twitter just needs to stay stable and improve some key things and they will sail on.

Post from: EveryJoe

Why is Twitter winning when it isn’t the best? It’s the swarm and peeps who win out.