Twitter, by definition, appeals most to the people who are somewhat extrovert, like to talk/write a lot about themselves (see Michael Arrington complaining recently that Twitter's downtime denied him from broadcasting, live, his food poisoning. I Am Not Making This Up)
Therefore, these people tend to talk a lot about what they are doing - and thus talk about Twitter, which makes Twitter more well known in our circles than much bigger websites.
A classic example is Apple's products, in the pre iPod/OS X days. They had a tiny market share, but a very high mindshare. The reason, in my opinion, was that Apple's user base consisted of many creatives - designers, writers, musicians etc. If Apple computers' users were mostly biologists, civil engineers and plumbers, you wouldn't hear about it nearly as much - even if they had the same market share and the same customer loyalty.
Hype seems to be much cheaper now, though. Many Apple products truly had groundbreaking engineering and design. Many Apple users were well known because they were talented and creative. Compare this to to Twitter's technical "challenges" (I mean, seriously - it's very minimal in UI/functionality side, as it should be. They got plenty of money and can attract top talent. If not scaling, what have they been doing for the past year?), and its most well known users...
Twitter, by definition, appeals most to the people who are somewhat extrovert, like to talk/write a lot about themselves (see Michael Arrington complaining recently that Twitter's downtime denied him from broadcasting, live, his food poisoning. I Am Not Making This Up)
Therefore, these people tend to talk a lot about what they are doing - and thus talk about Twitter, which makes Twitter more well known in our circles than much bigger websites.
A classic example is Apple's products, in the pre iPod/OS X days. They had a tiny market share, but a very high mindshare. The reason, in my opinion, was that Apple's user base consisted of many creatives - designers, writers, musicians etc. If Apple computers' users were mostly biologists, civil engineers and plumbers, you wouldn't hear about it nearly as much - even if they had the same market share and the same customer loyalty.
Hype seems to be much cheaper now, though. Many Apple products truly had groundbreaking engineering and design. Many Apple users were well known because they were talented and creative. Compare this to to Twitter's technical "challenges" (I mean, seriously - it's very minimal in UI/functionality side, as it should be. They got plenty of money and can attract top talent. If not scaling, what have they been doing for the past year?), and its most well known users...