I don’t use Twitter much, but I do update my status frequently on Facebook and use my IM status to distribute content (mostly Facebook clips) or give status updates. I guess for me the idea of a disconnected status update service doesn’t make much sense to me – perhaps Twitter embedded in other products would make it feel more mainstream for me.

Passive status broadcasting is relatively common, I suppose.

I’m not a twitterer but you see the same lightweight microcasting behavior in Facebook’s status, and kids were even hacking AIM’s away message years ago to achieve the same end. There is something to this behavior that has legs.

Lifecasting I’m not so sure about. Its too heavyweight a behavior to go mainstream IMO

really interesting question and one i’ve been debating with people as well. Some products which are early to market actually do represent the eventual mainstream because the early adopters aren’t fundamentally different than the mainstream, but as you note, sometimes they are.

Products like Twitter are evocative of what people want to do with one another, although there are power user use cases which won’t trickle into mainstream.

Before Google/YouTube, i helped get Second Life off the ground. At the time everyone thought we were crazy – that mainstream users would never be interested in creating or interacting in a 3D space. Now perhaps SL isn’t mainstream but it was evocative enough of a user need to be directionally correct.

So i think that’s ultimately what you see with lots of early technology that gets popular – directionally correct in ID’ing a mainstream need. Then it becomes a challenge as to whether that business can go mainstream or see the need met by other products. i.e. does Twitter become the messaging platform or will your Facebook status message broaden to be Twitter-like.