Twitter (and Facebook) are disruptive technologies.
A disruptive technology or disruptive innovation is a technological innovation that improves a product or service in ways that the market does not expect,
Disruptive technologies are particularly threatening to the leaders of an existing market, because they are competition coming from an unexpected direction.
Google in particular, is getting blindsided by Twitter and Facebook. Judging from the comments made by Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently about Twitter, “Speaking as a computer scientist, I view all of these as sort of poor man’s email systems,” it’s clear he doesn’t get it, doesn’t understand what Twitter is. Who would have thought Google would be acting like a dinosaur? But that’s what disruptive technology can do.
The reason Twitter and Facebook are disruptive is because they happen in real time. Google doesn’t.
97thFloor on why Twitter is so important
Twitter Search
What takes Google minutes or hours to show you takes Twitter seconds. Google organizes others content, Twitter creates and organizes its own content.
Communication between customers and companies
Twitter will replace a lot of media outlets or at least steal a lot of share from them. The way companies can communicate and react to customers via Twitter is Gods great gift to customer communication and loyalty.
The kicker
Embrace or be Replaced
Every company needs to embrace and leverage Twitter before Twitter replaces them. Twitter is already been said to take a chunk out of Job sites. It could do the same to Social Sites, classifieds, dating sites, search engines, aggregators, and so on. FaceBook knows that Twitter is their biggest threat, and it is carving out a strong hold as the most powerful Real Time Search Engine that Google cannot duplicate.