Yes I realize that Twitter has over 150 million users – I myself have been on it since 2009. However much of this mad rush to join has been spurred mostly by two groups: people addicted to status updates and businesses chasing after social marketing. The honest truth is that a few billion tweats later, most people have said very little with their 140 characters and most businesses couldn’t even tell you if their followers have impacted their bottom lines. Sure a small share of tech savy businesses have leverage twitter well but we’re not talking about the outliers here. No, up to this point the biggest winners have been the celebrities. Sadly, more people care about Colin Farrell’s lunch selection update than your new product launch tweet. But twitter is evolving. Rapidly.

Recently some significant things have happened with twitter that will make it matter to more than the attention starved and fan boys and girls of the world. Here’s what happened:

1. Ubiquity Critical Mass – This was bound to happen with the size of the social bandwagon as lately every phone, tablet, TV, watch, and electric razer has integrated twitter, facebook and netflix into it. The ubiquity finally paid off after some people used it to report the news before the news crews. The shift from twitter as the endless echo chamber to first on the scene is significant to its long term success.
2. Photo Sharing – The new twitter now includes photo sharing leaving it poised to become the top such service overnight. More importantly it gives twitter a second, independent reason to exist.
3. Steve Jobs’ Blessing – The inclusion of twitter into the bowels of iOS 5 is less of a boon to its userbase than it is a protection of its future. As it essentially moves one the big players that could threaten it’s supremacy over to its side.
4. Feature Integration – Much of twitter’s success is due to its simplicity of setup and use. Adding features such as automatic link shortening further simplifies tweeting for the masses.Alas, none of this solves the average business owner’s problem of leveraging twitter for their own use. However for those on the fence about twitter, it may have just gotten too powerful to ignore.