( CNN ) -- In the beginning was a word , sketched on a legal pad . And the word was Status . That was the working title used by programmer Jack Dorsey in 2000 , when he designed the service that was to become Twitter six years later . An urban-design geek , Dorsey envisaged a city full of people buzzing short messages at each other the way taxi dispatchers and bike messengers do . Where are you ? What 's up ? What 's your status ? Today , five years after its inception , Twitter 's status seems in flux . On the one hand , it is a vibrant virtual metropolis beyond Dorsey 's wildest imaginings . It has garnered 200 million citizens from every corner of the world , yet manages to be more orderly and simple than that noisy Facebook megalopolis down the road . There are no annoying Mafia Wars notifications here , no targeted ads , no anxiety-producing friend requests -- nothing but real-time messages from whomever you 're interested in , be they Lady Gaga or the girl next door . On the other hand , all is not well in Status City . This week 's cover story in Fortune warns that Twitter usage appears to be flatlining . One hundred million of those citizens are absent altogether , and Twitter.com has fewer visitors per month -- about 20 million -- than MySpace , according to comScore . The company has a steady hand on the tiller in new CEO Dick Costolo but lacks a visionary product leader ( Dorsey is equally focused on his next company , Square ) . It still suffers from irritating outages and is n't turning a profit . And as CNN reported on Wednesday , UberMedia , the company behind mobile Twitter apps like Echofon , is planning to build a rival microblogging network , one that may shun the famous 140-character limit . So are the buzzards circling over Status City ? Should tweeters head for the hills or prepare to move to a competing town with fewer regulations ? In a word : no . The city that Jack built is a lot more robust -- and unrepeatable -- than it may seem . First of all , let 's look at those numbers . They vary wildly according to which service you use and how you slice them . Quantcast says there has been a 50 % jump in Twitter usage in the past five months . Most of that is overseas : Google Analytics says international traffic has risen 83 % in the past year . And because so many people are tweeting on their mobile device or third party app , the Twitter.com numbers are incomplete and misleading . But even if we take the extremely conservative estimate of 20 million hardcore Twitter users , that ai n't chopped liver . It 's a phenomenal achievement for a 5-year-old company . These devotees could fill New York and Los Angeles combined . They ensure a neverending stream of news of every kind , perfectly customizable to your needs . You may be overwhelmed in Status City , but you will never be bored . No other service , not even Facebook , gives the impression of immersing you in a global conversation , a fact that becomes abundantly clear any time there is a natural disaster , revolution or major sporting event . As Costolo frequently says , the service has barely reached 1 % of its potential . A hardcore elite of 20 million-plus also represents an unassailable lead over would-be competitors like UberMedia . Many have tried , such as Jaiku ( bought and then abandoned by Google ) and the now-defunct Pownce . But this is n't a medium like TV , where many channels can succeed . This is more like a network where Twitter itself contains all the channels . Barring Twitter doing something phenomenally stupid , like charging users for the service , why would you change the dial ? Indeed , the only successful fellow microblogging services thus far are the ones that build layers on top of Twitter , such as Stocktwits , or open-source additions like Identi.ca . Be they gated communities or anarchic communes at the edge of Status City , they all need the vibrant metropolis itself in order to thrive . And what of that 140-character limit ? Far from being a problem , it remains Twitter 's greatest asset , as much as a tiny minority of users may chafe against it . In urban terms , it is the stop-light system that keeps traffic flowing -- and allows everyone to get a word in edgewise . Art thrives on constriction . Screenwriters and poets have long known that if something is worth saying , it 's worth saying as briefly as possible . With Twitter , the rest of the world is finding that out . Call it the democratization of writing . Anyone can enter the elite of Status City and gain thousands of followers , if they have the wit for it . In short , the ability to churn out interesting tweets has become a much-admired skill -- the ultimate 21st-century status symbol .
Ten years after its inception , Twitter 's status is in flux -- but it 's actually doing just fine . Quantcast : There has been a 100 % increase in Twitter traffic in the past five months . No other service gives the impression of immersing you in a global conversation .