Taking Twitter Seriously
Twitter can be easily dismissed as IM-Lite or a tool for people with short attention spans but, interestingly enough, it is also starting to gain traction as a serious communications tool for people to communicate about serious stuff…like politics.
ReadWriteWrite’s Josh Catone has a great post looking at Twitter’s pros and cons, and how it is started to be used even by the mainstream media to distribute content in a quick and efficient manner.
There’s no doubt Twitter has come a long way in a short period of time while its status and image has been upgraded from toy to tool.
The next interesting development will be whether Twitter can take the leap from being a tool used by a small, enthusiastic group of tech-savvy people to the mainstream. At some point will Twitter become as ubiquitous as blogging? Remember, it was only a couple of years ago that blogging was a pretty niche-y activity, while today everyone’s got one.
Another thing to look for is how the Twitter ecosystem will follow in the wake of Twitter’s growing popularity. There’s already demand for plug-ins that will make Twitter more effective and useful. If this area flourishes, it will provide Twitter will another push into the mainstream.
For more, check out techPresident, which suggests “Twitter could be the breakout technology tool of Election 2008″.
More: Speaking of Twitter and politics, the next big test for the platform (technology as opposed to political) is Feb. 5 when Super Tuesday happens. Let’s see how Twitter fares with all the political types pounding out messages as 24 U.S. states hold presidential primaries.
Technorati Tags: Twitter
January 31st, 2008 at 6:19 am
[...] Mark Evans: Taking Twitter seriously. [...]
January 31st, 2008 at 7:05 am
Do you think that Jaiku will show a more robust backbone and interface than Twitter’s and eventually steal some deluded twitter fans?
January 31st, 2008 at 7:24 am
[...] * Mark Evans takes Twitter seriously. [...]
January 31st, 2008 at 9:17 am
I find twitter is more addictive then a GREAT resource. If you add the wrong people or too many people then it can be hard to wade through the garbage and get to the meat of good tweets.
January 31st, 2008 at 10:35 am
Mark,
You’re absolutely right. My local paper has put out the call to recruit readers to an election-related twitter group. When the group gets traction they even plug the twitter feed into the paper’s online home page.
January 31st, 2008 at 11:08 am
@Citizent: Doubt it…Jaiku has had problems of its own lately, with the API in particular being down for quite a while. Twitter is just too large a community for Jaiku to catch up over night.
January 31st, 2008 at 11:14 am
[...] link:Mark Evans points out another event that will test Twitter’s mettle - Super [...]
January 31st, 2008 at 12:13 pm
I have enjoyed Twitter for a few months now but thought if I was spending so much time there, I should find a more serious application for it.
I have a community blog and currently there are four different Twitter accounts feeding a Twitter badge on my blog. At this time, the stream content is created and fed by me, is culled from various sources, all with the intent of adding quick information to my blog. I’d love to push this use for Twitter even further.
Any blog readers in my community can create their own Twitter accounts to be added to the badge. Ultimately this one Twitter stream could become an easy and resourceful place to go for information about whatever is happening in town.
It’s only a few weeks old. No clue whether it will ever become the resource I think it could be, but it’s been very cool to push a unique Twitter app.
January 31st, 2008 at 12:32 pm
@Mack D. Male: Twitter has had some serious stability issues over the last few days. So much so that everytime I go to the twitter.com I get a “technical difficulties” page.
Jaiku does have problems of it’s own but right now, it’s more consistently stable than Twitter.
On that note, I would love to see Jaiku become the front runner in the micro-blogs. It’s as simple to use as Twitter but with some better features.
January 31st, 2008 at 12:59 pm
I think the likelihood of Twitter going mainstream is much more probable than other web 2.0 technologies and services.
First, it is very simple and easy to understand. The concept can be explained in one or two sentences. Secondly, and most importantly, Facebook and other social networks have streamlined the process. Because they each have a similar ’status’ feature, the learning curve has been diminished. Education is minimal. People have a precedent with such a tool.
Cheers,
Aidan
http://www.MappingTheWeb.com
January 31st, 2008 at 1:27 pm
@Koby: I know…Twitter is annoying!! I guess what I was trying to say is that it will take a lot more than stability issues for the masses to move away to another service.
January 31st, 2008 at 2:02 pm
It seems the more system upgrades and work that the Twitter team puts in with its host, Joyent, the worse it gets; of course at some point they will get over the growing pains, and might be the first little startup to survive such awful stumbling.
Not a good endorsement for the vaunted and over used indictment of Rails architectures not scaling. It’s probably a case of the database clusters write saturating, and there is no way to buy one’s way out of that with money, server upgrades etc. - a redesign of the real echelon is required, often starting with personnel.
January 31st, 2008 at 2:11 pm
I guess we should be looking out for some management changes/additions at Twitter.
January 31st, 2008 at 2:19 pm
The question is:
Where are Obie Fernandez and Rob Russel when you need them? Someone buy those guys a cape!
Oh that’s right, they are working!
January 31st, 2008 at 2:30 pm
[...] Mark Evans wrote a great post entitled “Taking Twitter Seriously”. In his post, he ponders whether Twitter can break through to the mainstream. Such a feat has [...]
January 31st, 2008 at 7:49 pm
I like Twitter tracking (by keyword) for watching topical conversations.
February 1st, 2008 at 8:18 pm
On of my favorite things about Twitter is when people link to their projects or ideas or cool sites that they find. I’m not talking auto-posting your blog feed. I confess I used to do that and I turned it off a while back. I have never found anyone who has something brilliant in every post and need to spam their followers.
Anyway, the thing I don’t like is missing those cool links. So I made a Twitter Link Monitor. Have a read: http://www.techlifeweb.com/2008/02/01/twitter-link-monitor/
February 2nd, 2008 at 1:10 am
The one question that needs to be asked more frequently is this: Who are the people using Twitter? Spend all the time you want looking for the right business model, examining the architecture to ensure it is scalable, figure out why there are occasional interruptions (OK, this week more than occasional,) but the greatest asset going for Twitter is its community. I have written this elsewhere, but it bears repeating: The tech gurus, like Dave Winer, Robert Scoble, Loic Le Meur, Guy Kawasaki, David Weinberger, among others, are daily users. And they are gracious enough to interact with just about anyone. Twitter will succeed because it has the one thing many other startups do not: An amazingly talented and loyal base. Twitter will figure it out.
http://twitter.com/davidbadash
February 2nd, 2008 at 8:34 am
@Mark Evans: They serioulsy need to make it simpler to follow conversations.
February 5th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
[...] Twitter has been down a lot recently (and it’s gotten a ton of blog coverage). Twitter is still not working with Gtalk and I therefore haven’t gotten any updates [...]
February 12th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
[...] can be quite an overwhelming amount of information if you’re not careful. Here’s a pretty good article and my account in case you’re curious. Anyway, I installed a new plug-in called Twitter [...]
February 12th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
[...] “…its status & image has been upgraded from toy to tool…can [it]…leap from…a small, enthusiastic group of tech-savvy people to the mainstream.” – Mark Evans [...]
February 12th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
[...] “…its status & image has been upgraded from toy to tool…can [it]…leap from…a small, enthusiastic group of tech-savvy people to the mainstream.” – Mark Evans [...]