I was reading Louis Gray’s review of Safari 4.0 beta in which he talked about how the Web browser has replaced the operating system to become the “center of our world, and the prism by which we see everything”. There’s no doubt this is the new computing reality, and that the “Chrome Wars” now happening within the browser world will only mean great things for innovation and consumers.
At the same time, Louis’ post also got me thinking in another direction – about how Twitter – and, for that matter, microblogging – are slowly but surely edging into the center of our digital worlds as the place where share and access news, insight, new ideas and interesting services. For the most part, the most interesting developments within the Twitter ecosystem are happening with third-party desktop clients such as TweetDeck and Twhirl.
It’s not exactly an arm’s war but TweetDeck and Twhirl are aggressively rolling out new features that enhance the Twitter experience. For now, it’s healthy competition being waged by two start-ups looking to establish themselves as the leading players.
If you think about it, there are many similarities to what happened during the early days of the browser market when Netscape emerged out of nowhere to become the browser that everyone adored until Microsoft and Internet Explorer took over the market. We’re lucky today that there’s plenty of healthy competition within the browser market.
It makes me wonder what may happen within the Twitter ecosystem if third-party applications replace Twitter.com as the way that most people use Twitter. When does it make sense for Microsoft or Google to launch their own Twitter applications to take advantage of Twitter’s popularity. (Another option is TweetDeck and/or Twhirl are acquired).
Google and Microsoft could integrate search within their Twitter clients to their search engines and CPC systems. It would also give Google and Microsoft tremendous insight into what people are talking and thinking about.
More: ZDNet’s Christopher Dawson has a post on Twitter becoming a Google App. “Add Google’s search capabilities and potential integration with Google Talk, Gmail, or even Docs and you have yet another killer cloud application.”
Technorati Tags: google, thwirl, tweetdeck, twitter
