Twitter has landed in Newcastle

4Mar09

Newcastle, Australia

The Herald, Newcastle’s main newspaper, has finally acknowledged the existence of Twitter. Today’s Herald has one story dedicated to Twitter and another mentioning it.

Sarcasm aside, this is actually relatively significant. Newcastle is often used as a test-market in Australia as it is seen to be an excellent microcosm of Australian society. They say that if products can sell here, they can sell anywhere in Australia.

Newcastle is also a pretty conservative town, slow to adopt new technology and innovations. If Australia is 3 years behind the US (as is often claimed) then Newcastle is usually 6 to 12 months behind Sydney. That’s not a criticsm, just a reality.

So when the local paper in Newcastle starts talking about Twitter as the “new must-have communications method” then you know Twitter is starting to make an impact in Australia.

In fact, Twitter is already on the radar at another local paper, The Post. They might not be talking about Twitter in print, but I picked up one of their staff as a follower this week. (Hi Kim).

The Herald piece also discussed Twitterholic as a site to find the World’s most popular Twitter users. What they could have mentioned is that you can also track down the top 100 Twitter users Newcastle on Twitterholic. This would be a great way for new Twitter users to quickly identify and connect with people in their community.

So congratulations Twitter, you’ve really broken through.

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