Nuff said :)

Still trying to figure out FF but not buying it yet either.

Kris I think FF has value, but it's mainly for early adopters. When the masses are active in several social sites, as early adopters are now, then I'll believe some of the lofty growth-claims that are being bandied around for the site.

Mack,

Your use of the term A-Lister is curious. It comes out of the world of celebrities and indicates someone admitted entrance where others are not allowed. Social Media and Social Networking has no such distinction, thankfully. And two guys who most of American never heard of certainly do not qualify as A-Listers.

As for Plurk, Twitter or Friendfeed, I'm skeptical any of them will be around in five years.

Keep up the investigative reporting for us but please, drop A-Listers from your vocabulary. It assumes exclusion, and we do not need such egotistical terms in social media or social networking.

I personally prefer "rockstars" to "A-listers." It has that certain tabloid je ne sais quoi to it. ;)

And I think the conversation that's currently going on on Plurk about it hit it dead on: FriendFeed is for broadcasting, Plurk is for conversations.

Plurk is that trendy club where you can still hear something other than the band, and FriendFeed is the big arena where most folks are stuck in the nosebleed seats.

Lewis, first, 99.9% of America has never heard of Twitter, Friendfeed, or Plurk. And I doubt many will ever hear of Friendfeed or Plurk. Twitter is get a larger audience, but how large is hard to tell at this point.

Second, people like Arrington and Scoble are, like it or not, A-Listers. Any site that they suggest people should check out, is going to get hammered with traffic.

There will always be A-Listers in this and every space. And BTW for the record, I think most of them are far less interesting than 99% of the people using this space, but again, it is what it is.

In my world of reading Mack, you are the only one using that term in this way. And it is being used inappropriately by anyone useing it to refer to anyone other than the fashionably elite. Its definition, like it or not, has nothing to do with recommending anything. Its definition is: "The most desirable list for exclusive parties."

As one who has spent his life working with words, I find inappropriate usage distracting, which hurts the sender's reason for writing. In this case you. And you have too much good to say to use words that take away from what you are trying to say.

Take this advice or not. It's worth the price of the space.

"In my world of reading Mack, you are the only one using that term in this way."

Lewis I believe you, since you once said you'd never heard of Scoble, but most people have heard the term 'A-Lister', and know that Scoble/Arrington/Calacanis/Rubel fit under that umbrella. I didn't suddenly open the bottle with this post. I would wager that 90+% of the people that are active on Twitter/Plurk/Friendfeed have heard of these people, and identify them as A-Listers.

And again for the record, I don't agree that all of them, deserve such attention and influence, but it is what it is.

Does it depend on whose niche these A-listers belong to?

I personally am not familiar with the names you listed, but I don't work in marketing or branding (assuming these are A-listers in these fields) relating to technology and social media.

I'm trying Mac. Plurk just isn't "linear" enough for me I guess but I'm trying.

Mack, just wondering...
Is there a way to tell how many people are registered with or are using a particular social media site? Or are you relying solely on anecdotal feedback from fellow participants?

Sorry, one more thing. Can anyone access the type of graph you posted here through Google Trends - and for any domain name?

Elaine it's hard to tell, I saw one site that said Plurk has around 10K users, and I've heard anywhere from 1-10+ million users for Twitter.

Elaine here's the link for the Google Trends for Websites, just enter in the website you want and it will give you a graph. Enter multiple sites separated by a comma to track them against each other:

http://trends.google.com/websites?q=wikipedia.org

Let's face it: Twitter was nothing till apps like Snitter and (especially) Twhirl came along.

By adding the auto-refresh feature, they made it possible to have Twitter on in the background, half paying attention to it while I do something else. If someone @'s me, it makes a noise and I look up and answer.

But the ability to use Twitter without having to constantly hit "refresh" was what made me a convert and I think that's a fairly universal sentiment.

FriendFeed is just too busy, even with Alert Thingy, I can't figure out where I'm supposed to look first.

And Plurk is too time-consuming. You see Mack, I don't want to have conversations on a microblogging site.

That's what message boards and blogs are for. And for the life of me, Plurk just seems like UrbanBaby.com or some other much-used message board, only with a funkier interface. But by its nature, it'll never be background noise the way Twitter is.

And for me that's the beauty of Twitter- the ability to jump into or out of a conversation that continues on without me.

The problem behind all this is the subjectivity of the "researchers" that provide such data and/or conclusions.

I could take this graph:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=irc%2C+plurk%2C+friendfeed%2C+twitter&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

and say that IRC still has much more users. Yet the question is what all meanings IRC has. It has some important meaning in Finland. :-)

Once again, looking at this:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=plurk%2C+friendfeed%2C+twitter&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

I would say Twitter is the master.

On the other hand, this data is most probably a month old or something.

So where are people going, how and what they will use, will Twitter survive or not... so I'm wondering if any "A-Lister" (whatever that is) is a good data source for such predictions? My guess is that they can estimate, yet 2 years from now there estimations might be 100% wrong.

From the feedback (and push back) I'm getting after calling for a Twitter boycott (www.twittercott.com), I'm here to tell you there are a whole lot of people who won't be leaving Twitter for anything else - FriendFeed, Plurk, identi.ca, whatever. Not until you "pry their cold, dead hands" off the app at least.

Twitter had so much potential! Checking out Plurk now!

And now we may know at least part of the reason why the same A-Listers are hyping Friendfeed:

http://www.profy.com/2008/07/06/friendfeedgaming/

I love Plurk and I could never get into twitter. I think it might have to do with timing for me as I joined Plurk while it is new and by the time I found Twitter I was too late so to speak. I have made so many more interesting connections and had such great interactions with the Plurk community. It is supportive and quirky, just the way I like to socialize. Thanks for writing the piece. i am veronicaromm on Plurk

The www.mpdailyfix.com is cool resource, thanks, owner. And look at this state hot water heater