Mark Bridge writes:
It’s been a headline-grabbing couple of weeks for micro-blogging site Twitter. First it picks up London-based TweetDeck for what was probably around $40 million - and then it’s built into the next version of Apple’s iPhone and iPad operating system. From this autumn you’ll be able to tweet from within the camera app, the web browser, the contact application and even YouTube on your iOS5 device.
That’s good news for Twitter’s increasingly-mobile 200 million users (or thereabouts).
It would be easy to think Twitter was nigh-on unstoppable... and that its only possible enemy was ennui.
I mean, it’s not as though there’s a rival micro-blogging site with - oh, let’s say 140 million users.
Hang on a moment, there is.
It’s called Sina Weibo, it’s less than two years old and it’s Chinese. But it won’t be exclusively Chinese for long. According to a report on TechWeb (via mocoNews.net), it’s planning to launch an English-language version in the USA later this summer.
Does this mean everyone will leave Twitter for Weibo? Nope.
Will everyone leave Weibo for Twitter? Nope.
Will everyone stop treating Twitter as though it were an open standard rather than a commercial organisation? Perhaps.
French broadcasters have recently been reminded that they mustn’t promote specific businesses... and that means no more “follow us on Twitter” or “be our friend on Facebook”. I wonder when - or if - the rest of the world will follow suit?