Thinking thorough Twitter thoughts
Hey all, welcome to T.T.T.T. Not a new series of mine, I’m afraid, considering I have a horrible track-record of starting them and not continuing it. Case in point: my first and last post on community. So, next time I start a part 1 of anything, please slap me!
Back to Twitter. Just like many others, I’m trying to grasp what it means to me and to others. Following are some conclusions, after updating and reading Twitter since July 12th… which I guess, makes me a veteran now!
Twitter-marketing
Twitter is in fact RSS times 10, there is no denying it. If you look at “serious” channels, like TechCrunch, BBC news, or, most recently, MTV, you can get the same info you would get from a regular rss-feed. We don’t belong to the giants yet, but you can find us on Twitter.com/techiteasy as well!
All this has greatly been facilitated by a service called Twitterfeed.com, which (unofficially) allows people to feed rss-feeds into their channels, as well as people like Dave Winer, who has happily been hacking away at the API this whole summer.
The only downside is that, if you subscribe to the Twitter-feed in your rss-reader, it opens Twitter, not the originating site. The second issue is the use of Tiny-feeds, to conserve space of course, but it also prevents the Google-juice from spilling over.
That said, the big T is an excellent way to update your readers on the small and big things happening in your / the world. This brings me to the next topic.
Twitter-learning
Huh, you learn things from Twitter? Let me explain. To me Twitter is two things.
A. it is a highly personal and dynamic look into the ups and downs of somebody’s life. I wrote about this briefly on another blog of mine, but the value of Twitter, to me, is that it brings you closer to a person, sometimes high performers, and makes them appear more human. Better than a biography, which is highly edited.
I do believe that it is possible to write a book about net-society, by just reading Twitter-streams for a while. I’m not going to mention names, but when people say stuff like how they feel about social networking, how the post-holiday period affects them, how blogging is difficult, etc. you get a real insight into what today’s information-worker is going through.
B. Twitter is also like the place in the room where the crowd is gathered. When you just join, you’re on the outside, just listening in. You can learn an incredible amount, but you will only be able to teach, to interact, if you speak up. This is hard, but not much harder than standing with a room full of strangers.
I should also add that I think its important to keep a blog next to Twitter. Not only does this give people a richer understanding of you, just like visiting your your house; there are also thoughts that need a bigger text-box to be expressed. Some people disagree with me on that.
Twitter-business
Sigh. I’ve read about a dozen interpretations of how Twitter (will) make(s) money. I don’t know, you don’t know, and who cares, right? We are talking about simple software, which costs drastically less than say, creating a Facebook or a mobile phone. Seriously, it’s like wondering what a mouse eats for breakfast.
That said, I am aware of the principles of business, you invest and must recuperate that investment. And Twitter has received investment. Most recently, Twitter has subtly been advertising the MTV VMA-channel, which leads me to believe that they expect Twitter-marketing to be a factor in their business-model. Where Twitter (and Jaiku) really shines is reporting from live events. Just look at Scott Bourne’s live Jaiku-coverage of the September 5 Apple event, and you see that it is in many ways superior to Engadget’s coverage. For one, you can comment on each piece of news separately, and two, you only have to take your mobile with you! So I hope that people find find ways to exploit Twitter this way too and that the company makes some kind of revenue from it, without pissing the users off!
At the very least, they’ll need money to bring out more needed innovations: more interactivity, a better solution for urls, and please, something better than Twitter-blocks!
The picture is courtesy of Brent Hodgson. Incidentally, Jeremy has suggested that I start writing about some topics that affect both my new interest (and blog) on sounds, food & retail and the world of Tech, here on Tech IT Easy. For ideas, e.g. cool retail-related software or e-commerce-sites, please send me a mail to foodandretailblog@gmail.com.
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Education, Entertainment, Friends, Internet, Networks, Twitter, innovation, marketing, media, user-generated content
Vince, I’m having a hard time understanding the underlying thesis of your post: in one sentence, which message exactly are you trying to convey?
Thx in advance, sorry for not getting it. There are just too many links for me to handle all this information flow.
Oh, and I tried to insert titles and everything. One sentence, I’ll try.
I am reporting my impressions of the capabilities of Twitter after 2 months of use; they include that Twitter is a great place for marketing, for interactive learning, and that their business-model is still unclear, but also irrelevant (to me).
After writing, I see what you are saying. But not every post that I write is meant to be digested in 5 seconds, or 1 sentence for that matter…
To add a little to that, with a clarity that can only come from an hour’s jog, my thesis is that I’m coming to grasp with what Twitter is, like so many people around the globe. Many have dismissed it as trivial and some have adopted it into their hearts, and my thoughts are about why.
I propose, academically, that Twitter can be viewed from three angles: the marketing perspective, which should be clear; the interactive or learning perspective, which is still evolving; and the business perspective, i.e. are we buying into another trend or is this a worthwhile enterprise?
My thoughts on the latter is that this is no Pets, Boo, or Kozmo.com, while at the same time our—the public’s and VCs’—eyes are still looking at many of today’s start-ups in the same way. Twitter has no significant capital investments, apart from servers and staff, and can pretty easily fund itself with relatively simple business models, which I am sure are evolving.
And my thesis, as always, is to start a conversation around a topic, and I appreciate if people write me a comment if stuff is unclear to them, or they simply disagree, or have something to add.
Thanks very much Vince, I understand much better what your post was aiming at now.
About Twitter’s ambitions: I think they are large. There must be a platform vision somewhere: Twitter has raised funds with a number of top-tier US VCs including Fred Wilson’s Union Square Ventures (NYC) and Bay Area Charles River Ventures.
See Scoble’s show here: http://scobleizer.com/2007/08/02/youre-watching-my-twitter-video/http://scobleizer.com/2007/08/02/youre-watching-my-twitter-video/
Hey, sorry for the late reply, I was down with the flue.
I did watch the video-interview, very cool. There’s certainly the dimension of mobile use, which I’ve spent 0 time with, but is very attractive if mobile tech catches up with the rest (and I get my iPhone).
As far as ambition and platform goes, the potential is definitely there. As far as vision goes.. I think there is a reason why they are keeping their service so simple, to have everyone else build crazy stuff on top of it. And as soon as they hit a good number of people, they can monetize it with creating specialised channels for events, I guess.