Twitter is currently the daddy of the micro-blogging/social sharing space with 1.7 million monthly unique US visitors in May according to Compete. Growth has been rocketing with the number of uniques rocketing in the past 6 months. However growth has brought problems of frequent downtime.

Frustration with Twitter has led a number of bloggers to look for alternatives. Some bloggers are now claiming that FriendFeed will become the Twitter killer. A great product coupled with fast development cycles and good uptime means have resulted in fast growth with FriendFeed achieving 300,000 uniques within 3 months of launch.

Some tech innovators manage to overcome early scaling problems to go on to build highly successful companies (e.g. eBay). Others, like Friendster, blaze the trail only to see competitors surpass them and take the main prize. Will Twitter become the Friendster of micro-blogging?

(Follow me on Twitter here)

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When Will FriendFeed Have More Unique Visitors Than Twitter?

% chance over time

    2008

    2009

    2010

    2011

    2012+ or never

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Hubdub - The News Prediction Game

Popularity: 9% [?]

We are really excited to announce that we have just integrated with Twitter. What that means is that when you make a prediction on Hubdub you can then immediately drop it into your Twitter stream. Additionally, you can opt to save your Twitter log in details and either tweet all your predictions or just selectively tweet them.

Here is the first ever Hubdub prediction tweet:

You can follow me on Twitter here. Get tweeting those predictions!

Popularity: 8% [?]

I’ve been talking to a lot of people over the past couple of days about the differences between polls and a market. Of course there is a rich set of academic research showing the superiority of a liquid market over a poll. Additionally, to me it makes intuitive sense: You would never try to price a stock by polling a 100 traders.

Anyway I thought I would do a quick fun comparison between a poll and a market. We are currently running a market on who will be the most followed on Twitter by the end of June.

Cast your votes here:

Place your bets here:

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The Diggnation Army v The TWiTs: Who’ll be most followed by the end of June?

% chance over time

    Leo Laporte

    Kevin Rose

    Jason Calacanis

    Alex Albrecht

    Robert Scoble

    John C Dvorak

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Hubdub - The News Prediction Game

Let the competition commence!

Popularity: 14% [?]

I just received an email to say someone was following me on Twitter.

Will the kitten return? Will she overcome her feelings of low self-esteem or will she spiral down into a mess of self-loathing and negativity? Or, will she just go back to watching TV? I am hooked - this is better than a sitcom! Catch the next installment here.

UPDATE: Turns out midwyke is a friend of our’s mum! Sorry Chris’s mum. I am following you now. Don’t be so down on yourself and we *do* want to hear more about the kitten. Here is a LOLcat to cheer you up:

More at ICanHasCheeseBurger.

Popularity: 12% [?]

If you want to keep up to date with what is happening at Hubdub HQ, new markets, stuff and trivia then follow me (Nigel Eccles) on Twitter.

Moving from the bottom of the leaderboard to the top with news that Leo Laporte has put 500 followers between himself and Kevin Rose. It is now trading at about 50/50 but I think the grey (Laporte) is going to pull it off. Offering to give a way a top end gaming PC to one of his followers at random seems to have done the trick!

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TWiT Twitter Derby: Who’ll be most followed by midnight May 25th?

% chance over time

    Kevin Rose

    Leo Laporte

    Jason Calacanis

    Robert Scoble

    John C Dvorak

    Wil Harris

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Hubdub - The News Prediction Game

Popularity: 13% [?]

The early leader, Leo Laporte, is still way out in lead by just under 1,000 followers. So confident was he in his lead that he didn’t even mention Twitter in his weekly tech podcast. That complacency might cost him dear (well at least a Hubdub T-shirt!) as Kevin Rose is gunning for the top spot and he is willing to play dirty to get there. Last week he sent out a tweet saying he was going to give his old iPhone to one of his followers chosen by random.

Only a few more followers and Rose will have bested Obama and it will be man-o-man between Laporte and Rose. Also looking comfortable in the saddle is Jason Calacanis who has rocketed up to 4th position. Could his new Tesla sportscar give him the firepower he needs to catch them at the finish line? The cameraman is opening his bag for what looks like will be a thrilling finish!

Prediction markets

what is this?

TWiT Twitter Derby: Who’ll be most followed by midnight May 25th?

% chance over time

    Kevin Rose

    Leo Laporte

    Jason Calacanis

    Robert Scoble

    John C Dvorak

    Wil Harris

Get this widget

Can you get it right? Make your prediction…

Hubdub - The News Prediction Game

Looking at the prediction markets now shows that punters have recognized Rose’s push up the field with them currently putting him at favorite with a 48% chance to win. Punters aren’t convinced that a late Calacanis surge is going to happen but a mystery punter has gone out on a limb and placed a stack on John C Dvorak. Dvorak looks like he has a mountain to climb but does someone out there know something we don’t?

Me? I’m putting my money down on Rose to pull ahead on the final furlong.

TWiT Twitter Derby: Who’ll be most followed by midnight May 25th?

I predicted Kevin Rose   on last Friday

what is this? The News Prediction Game

Popularity: 17% [?]

By Nigel (Chief News Junkie)

Regular This Week in Tech (TWiT) listeners will know that a race is breaking out between their pundits as to who will become the most followed on Twitter, which is tracked by Twitterholic. What started as friendly rivalry seems to have turned into an all out Derby where every follower counts. Hubdub has a market on who will win in having the most followers by the end of May.

For those of you that don’t closely follow TWiT here is a more detailed form guide:

Kevin Rose - founder of Digg, Revision 3 and Pownce. Kevin is a late convert to Twitter due to Pownce being a competitor. Now he has joined Twitter his number of followers has rocketed in the past couple of months. Kevin stars in the hugely popular Diggnation show which, if he used it to get more followers, could probably leave his rivals for dust. Follow Kevin.

Leo Laporte - founder and host of TWiT. Another late convert to Twitter due to concerns about brand confusion between TWiT and Twitter. He has now fully embraced it and is hugely ramping up his follower base having recently taken the top slot from Obama (who is that guy?). The TWiT show reaches 500,000 monthly unique listeners so he has a lot of firepower to draw on if needed. Follow Leo.

Jason Calacanas - founder of Weblogs and Mahalo. Jason was an early adopter of Twitter and has built up a sizable following. Mahalo is massively ramping up its user base and Jason is a born networker, so while he is behind he shouldn’t be under-estimated. Follow Jason.

Robert Scoble - the Scobleizer, formerly of the Pod Show, now with Fast Company. Robert is an A-list blogger extraordinaire. If you follow him you get the feeling that their is barely a thought that goes through his head that doesn’t get blogged, Twittered, streamed or otherwise blasted out to the blogosphere. Easily the winner on most prolific Tweeter. Follower growth seems to have flattened though. Follow Robert.

John C Dvorak - tech journalist and blogger, star of Cranky Geeks among other shows. John is the cranky uncle who moves seemlessly from the correct way to cook pulled chicken to Microsoft’s web strategy. Despite claiming not to be interested in the race he never misses the chance to pitch his blog (Dvorak.org/blog!) or twitter account (THErealDVORAK!). Follow John.

Wil Harris - British technology blogger and founder of Channel Flip. Wil is the youngest of the crew coming in at a sprightly 25. He is way behind on number of followers but could potentially galvanise the British nation by turning this into a transatlantic fight. You guys dumped our tea in the harbour, we’ll bloody well take your Twitter! Follow Wil.

Personally, my money is on Leo Laporte but I might have a small side bet on Wil Harris, purely out of patriotic duty.

Market: TWiT Twitter Derby: Who will be the most followed by midnight May 25th?

Popularity: 14% [?]

By Nigel (Chief News Junkie)

According to CNET Twitter has just signed a term sheet for another $15 to $20 million in funding. It is one of those fantastic “huge audience growth now, figure out the business model later” plays. Sometimes they work out (Google), sometimes they don’t (IM) and sometimes it is just to early to say (Digg, Facebook, YouTube).

In commenting on the recent news Business Week columnist Sarah Lacy stated that Twitter was “on the verge of potentially going mainstream in a big way“. That’s a pretty strong prediction from a journalist and I follow a lot of them. However, where is the evidence that Twitter is even on the verge of hitting the mainstream in a small way. TechCrunch report that they have around 200,000 active users per week. Even among early adopter tech community Twitter isn’t that widely used.

One demographic of the population that it has reached almost complete acceptance (and in some instances road to Damascus type conversions) is among bloggers and journalists. The value of Twitter to that community for finding stories, breaking stories and marketing is huge. Definitely worth the effort of downloading the app, building the friend list, un-following the ’social spammers’ and the lost productivity of being distracted all day. For the mainstream it just doesn’t pass the cost/benefit test.

If you check out Twitterholic you will see that 20 of the top 25 Twitterers are part of the tech crowd. There are five who aren’t (Obama (1), HotDogsLadies (7), CNN (8), TastyBlogSnack (12) and Stephen Colbert (24)) although all of them are very popular with the tech crowd. Here is my prediction: In a year’s time the majority of the top 25 Twitterers will still be techies.

The market is here: Will the majority of the top 25 Twitterers be techies on May 2, 2009? Want to bet against?

Popularity: 7% [?]

By Nigel (Chief News Junkie)

TechCrunch is reporting that Twitter is going to abandon Ruby on Rails. Twitter famously has had massive scalability problems which many commentators have put down to their use of Ruby on Rails. Their former Chief Architect Blaine Cook famously claimed that scaling Rails was “easy”.

TechCrunch is saying they are picking this up from multiple but un-named sources so looks to me about 60% likely that it will happen with 3 months. So, will Twitter announce it is abandoning Ruby on Rails by the end of July?

Popularity: 7% [?]

By Nigel (Chief News Junkie)

Get Satisfaction is an amazing service for solving problems and communicating with your users. However sometimes I think we have a different class of problem to other sites…

Will the USA suffer another terrorist attack on their homeland before the end of the 2008 election?

Popularity: 8% [?]