A word of confession before I proceed, I am not a Twitterer. I don’t Tweet. With that in mind however I follow with fascination and high interest the ongoing soap opera that is Twitter. I do think it has a business value as any tool which helps marketers better understand what conversations are taking place by different groups of people (aka. consumers), can be monetized. Ongoing mainstream media coverage has run the full gamut from dismissive to over-hyped and critiqued through dismissive again and many speculate Twitter will survive no longer than any other fad which has captured our imagination.   

When thinking of fad products, the Hula Hoop is top of mind. In 1958, after only four months on the market, Wham-O sold 25 million Hula Hoops in the United States and over 100 million globally. As interest waned, Wham-O eventually stopped manufacturing the toy – that is until 1965 when they inserted ball bearings in the cylinder to make the whoosh sound. That helped revive interest in the Hula Hoop, which still makes money for Emeryville-based Wham-O. The privately held company declines to reveal Hula Hoops sales numbers but I think it is safe to say the Hula Hoop is undeserving of it’s reputation as the ultimate fad item.

Comparatively Twitter is a little less popular. Unique monthly visitors hit roughly 6 million in February 2009 and March 2009 saw 19.1 million visitors for Twitter.com. It is worth noting though Twitter is doing it’s best to catch up – visitors to the site represent a 3,000% gain as compared to a year ago.  To quote directly from a Com Score blog post by Andrew Lipsman on May 12, 2009 – “In fact, the past two months have seen such a flood of traffic to Twitter.com that it has more than quadrupled its audience during that brief period of time, literally unprecedented growth for a site whose audience already numbers in the millions.”

So it seems there may be a little ways for Twitter to go but at this rate, in 50 years it may be the next Hula Hoop.