How Many People Does It Take to Make a Success: A Look at Qwitter

The following post is from eLearn Magazine Editor-in-Chief Lisa Neal's blog "How Many People Does It Take to Make a Success: A Look at Qwitter" After reading, I find this good to keep on my post as its describes one of the way the people are using web 2.0 technologies.

In Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, Clay Shirky discusses why some social networks stick while others collapse. Wikipedia is one of his examples of a success. When I looked at Qwitter, my first reaction was it was a failure because there were only 614 people using it. Qwitter, a cleverly-named initiative from TobaccoFreeFlorida that harnesses Twitter, is promoted as “a social tool designed to help you quit smoking” through keeping track of daily cigarettes and feelings about smoking. They also provide tips. That 614 people signed up for Qwitter seems low given that 750 people sign up for Twitter daily and 3 million people use it.
My initial reaction was reinforced by looking at how Qwitter was used, since many of the users had started in April (due to launch publicity, I speculated) and had stopped using it after a few - or just one - use. This is notable given that many Twitter users tweet many times daily. Looking through Qwitter users, I finally found a recent and more sustained user who tweeted pretty regularly for the past month, although there didn’t seem to be any cessation taking place. Click here to read more.