It turns out that Twitter won't die when we all get bored with it - it's going to go KA-BOOM! by design. If you've ever seen a link to an individual tweet you'll have noticed that the tweet is numbered. Well, it turns out that most Twitter clients will fail when the Twitter counter hits 2,147,483,647. According to Twitpocalypse we're going to hit that limit over the weekend.

While Twitter skeptics will no doubt be laughing there's a real consequence to failures of social media tools. Many businesses now rely on Twitter as part of their inter and intra office communications. In preparing for the "Twitter for CEOs" seminar I've mentioned previously, I've been speaking with businesspeople about how they use Twitter. One PR Account Director we spoke to uses Twitter to promote their brand, works with clients and media and to track emerging trends. In other words, it's an important part of their business toolkit and would be missed.

Apparently, the cure for this potential Twitter collapse is for Twitter clients to store tweet IDs using a different data structure otherwise Twitter clients might list tweets in the wrong order or even stop working.

If you're a Twitter user we'd suggest keeping an eye on things over the next few days and to update your Twitter client if an update is made available. That way you'll be protected from the Twitpocalypse.