The Celebrity Invasion

First it was the geeks...

Then came the brands... @jetblue, @comcastcares, @zappos, @hrblock, @starbucks.

Quickly followed by the B-list celebrities... @janinaz, @MCHammer, @imogenheap, @lisaloeb4real, @greggrunberg.

And now everyone from Eli Manning to Soulja Boy is tweeting. Don't believe me? Check out the recently launched "Celebwitter" -- a Twitter portal of only celebrity updates.

As was predicted many moons ago, with the celebrities come the masses; and Twitter has (no, I won't say jumped the shark) exploded over the last couple of months. Apologies for making you load so many images, but take a look at the screenshots from TwitterCounter:

Stephen Fry


Ashton Kutcher


Shaquille O'Neill


Lance Armstrong


Britney Spears


Dave Matthews


Jimmy Fallon


Coldplay


Sean Combs


With the exception of Britney and Coldplay (whose PR teams send the updates), each of those accounts is being written by the person themselves. Check their tweets with TwitPics and see for yourself.

And it's not just the celebrities who are benefiting. "Geek celebrities" have seen the same kind of off-the-charts curve in recent months.

Heather "Dooce" Armstrong


Kevin Rose


Evan Williams


Wil Wheaton


Justine "iJustine" Ezarik


One huge caveat that helps explain these skyrocketing charts: 99% of the people above (the accounts in the screenshots) are currently listed in Twitter's "Featured Users" -- a list new users see when they first join.

Sidebar: I really think Twitter should put some "normal folks" in their featured list, or perhaps let you choose a category of people in which you're interested. People who sign up and only follow celebrity accounts don't get the full value (i.e. 2-way communication) of Twitter. But that's a whole other post...

UPDATE 3/12/09: As it turns out, Dave Winer wrote that "whole other post" the very next day. "Why it's time to break out of Twitter."

I don't have recent metrics, but I think this very unofficial data speaks for itself. Twitter is indeed going mainstream, and we're about to see a sea change in behavior, etiquette, spam, and everything else that comes with a new technology being adopted by the masses.

/Ground : DIYtraffic - realtime traffic alerts

My latest post at /Ground -- DIYtraffic - realtime traffic alerts

The good folks at DIYcity have just unleashed DIYtraffic on the world.

SMS traffic updates have existed for a while, but each locality uses its own system and has its own standards. The goal of DIYtraffic was to create "one single application that can be configured to work anywhere, in any city or town, with very little effort." This unified platform is available for any community/city/locality to use and build on together like an open source project. It's designed to be easily configurable for any city/town in the US, but will work outside the US, too, if you have a feed of traffic updates.

Read the full post over at /Ground.

Twitter Followers Mosaic

For some reason, this is only grabbing the last 400 followers. Would love to see include all followers.

Get yours here.