1) Old people

Old people ruin everything. They’ve ruined print media, they’ve ruined daytime talk, and they’re going to ruin Twitter. As the calendar pages flip, so do the numbers on technology’s chronograph. Cell phones used to be a young person’s game for instance. Computers, too, belonged to the youth. Sure, the accounting types and journalists used them for work, but until recently, there were no “old people” accessing e-mail accounts or downloading music illegally.

2) Young people

There was a time when the social networks were only open to those who could benefit from networking. MySpace was 18-plus, Facebook was for college kids and businesses, and Friendster was only available for native-born U.S. citizens ages 35 and above. As change came, and when those sites bottomed out of their respective registration criteria, searching for 14-year-olds from your home county became all the more simple. Youngsters, while easier to search for, were, well, more difficult to search for due to their typically horrifying spelling. Finding “Ashley” was about as easy as finding “@$h13y”; so, not easy at all.

3) Corporations or universities

The second universities and typical “old people” establishments begin to blip on the Twitter radar (the “Twitdar” as I’ve been calling it) is the second the thing crumbles like a sandcastle colliding with the tide.

I’m not doubting the wonders of synergy or adaptation to what’s “hot” in the world of technology right now, but hearing your school harp about how its accountancy program was ranked No. 10 in the country? Yeah, that’s a buzzkill.

4) Everybody else

Who, exactly, is going to kill Twitter? Answer: You! Greedy, greedy you. MySpace succumbed. The once free and fancy tool is now overblown with the status updates, photo albums and tagging feature all customary of Facebook.

And Facebook? More applications than a dozen and one fully loaded iPhones taped together. But Twitter is supposed to be the “clean” one. Log in, update your status, log out. Just you wait until the general population, on yet another expansion bent, demands more than mere status updates. Soon they’ll want photos and videos and Belgian waffle-making additions.

5) Twitter itself

Twitter, I’m assuming, took a tremendous amount of time to execute, but that doesn’t make it immune from future death. As of right now, tweeting holds no higher function in everyday life than to inform friends of inclement weather or crack a guess at the various injuries Carlos Zambrano will incur this season. Once it starts opening itself up to advertising, starting its own record label and producing lackluster movies, it may be time to pack it up. I’m going to say it right now: The first shirt I see with that little bird on it — I’m done.