Tweet-a-boo (aka The Twitter Phenomenon)

The Wired Magazine calls it "Incredibly useful" and Time calls it "Twitter is on its way to becoming the next killer app." Damn I have to part of cutting edge useful things and it's been around for a year or two! Click here to visit Twitter. Well I've been watching Twitter for a while now, sightseeing. And this fine Sunday, thought I'll share my penny's worth.


The concept is quite simple and the site so eloquently puts it

"Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?"

Long story short you build timelogs of your activities. Postings are called "Tweets" and you have a plethora of applications that help tell the world what you're upto. Check out the video explaining why you need to Tweet! Take for instance SMSs from your mobile, direct posting from the site, IM apps and dedicated desktop clients. (Digressing a little: found a really cool (free!) multi IM called Digspy. Had been using Pidgin, meebo & Trillian for a while. Will do a quick comparison later)

My first impression: doesn't Facebook already have this?

Second impression: redundant information. Too many sources of information. And in someway you following someones Tweets, doesn't it vaguely resemble subscribing to an RSS feed of a blog? Possibly ambiguous too "I got an out of office mail and his Tweet says he's working today!"

Biggest impression: do we need to be this open?? (Pause for thought) I'll give that a morbid yes. How many times have we checked out friend's videos and photos? Youtube, Flickr. I rest my case.

The experiment (if I may call it) is quite interesting. Check out how many guinea pigs we have: (Source)
March 2008
Total Users: 1+ million
Total Active Users: 200,000 per week
Total Twitter Messages: 3 million/day

And interestingly 40% of the traffic is from the US. Now now, I'm not drawing any conclusions here :)

So what ideas do I see (apart form the one where there'll be electrodes stuck in your brain that can directly feed Twitter)? Thought I'd list the fisrt few that popped up.

1. We're all going to be even more dependent on Internet. And that means ubiquitous... convergence of devices. "Why call him to see if he's at home? I'll just check his Tweets!". "Did he remember to pay the electricity bill? I'll just check his Tweets!"
2. A Tweet channel where you can collaborate and Tweet together. "Okay man, I'm with you. We'll wake up everyday at 5 and got jogging."
3. A service where you can plan your day and Tweet through them. "Hmm. Practice guitar at 4 for 15 mins. "
4. Distribution points for information. "Follow me to find the best deals on the Net."
5. Curiosity among PR guys & enterprises. New medium to reach out to users. Facebook is something I joined recently and it struck me as a huge marketing ground.
   

The concept is so wild that I actually think it might work! Heard recently about Dell planning to answer customers through Twitter. And then there was a bank, can't seem to recall the name. The idea was again to use Twitter to reach out. Hey if your customers are hanging out in Secondlife and you can set up shop there, why not Twitter?

I'm very sure that enterprises are confused about the phenomenon. But the concept of Twitter is so wild that I think it might just work. And I certainly do see it evolving to videos, voice, streaming stations and merging with a popular social site;)

As an after thought frankly I think the name is hilarious! What are the people called Twits? :p

PS: To hell with privacy. You can catch my activities here.... when I eat, sleep, run to catch the bus. How interesting! Hmm lets see if this is gonna work out.