> We were at Twitter’s first developer conference,
> an event called Chirp. And indeed, Will.I.Am’s
> armchair interview was just one of a few clear
> indications that Twitter really wasn’t just for
> geeks anymore. Instead, Twitter had suddenly
> blossomed into a company that aspired to be a
> player in media and entertainment and
> advertising, with its eye focused on becoming
> the giant, publicly-traded company it is today.
> Twitter began to take its first tentative steps
> away from its geeky roots, which set the stage
> for a nerd backlash that still hasn’t fully abated.
Wait, what? Am I the only one who remembers that Twitter launched at SXSW? They have never had geeky roots. They were always a technology product targeting media and entertainment folks.
A big part of Twitter's initial appeal was that it was the only social network that had honest-to-God celebrities on it. I remember when being able "follow" some famous actor still carried a frisson of excitement, like you just ran into them in a restaurant.
SXSW is not geeky? I don't see what world you live in that you can so self-assuredly attempt to split this particular hair with double emphasis. Are you trying to draw a line between hipsters and geeks? Or tech before tech was cool? Native vs web? I'm not following.
Anyway, Twitter didn't launch at SXSW, they already had significant traction almost purely among a certain subset of web developers. Remember, they were spun out of Odeo (the market leader in podcast aggregation before iTunes silently added podcasts to iTunes and killed them overnight). This was one of the first Ruby on Rails companies way back in 2006 (maybe they even started in 2005). The entire thing that made people excited about Twitter was the fact that they were API first, and you could build any kind of client on it. It was really the first company that set the standard for web APIs, and the hype and anticipation around the possibilities were palpable at that time. In fact this early developer traction is what put Twitter on the map and got them the traction that they became interested enough that celebrities started joining. The celebrity thing was the second wave, which never would have been possible without the developers and early-adopter geeks to prove the platform. Remember, they "launched" at SXSW in 2007, but I challenge you to find a single celebrity with a join date before 2009.
It's also probably relevant that Twitter didn't launch at SXSW. This was me writing about the company and service a month before that SXSW, and I was hardly first: https://blog.twitter.com/2007/anil-dash-twitter
A big part of Twitter's initial appeal was that it was the only social network that had honest-to-God celebrities on it. I remember when being able "follow" some famous actor still carried a frisson of excitement, like you just ran into them in a restaurant.