RE: Twitter, Tina Fey, and the Future of Micro-Blogging
“Twitter hasn’t gone mainstream? Did I miss something?
I may use twitter differently than others. I use twitter as a means to keep up all of the web tools /sites I use. I use it to keep my Facebook page up to date. I use it in my blog to make short points that don’t add up to a full-length post. I use it to keep up with ideas including mine as well as others. I use it as an advanced RSS reader, a research tool, to stay in touch with what my friends feel the need to say, to share what I think is interesting with people that are interested in what I have to say, to keep up with the websites I recommend, and it’s archive feature to keep up with what I have said. In short I use twitter as a lifestreaming service.
I would like to hear what people say when they tell others about twitter unsuccessfully. To call twitter a micro-blogging service is like calling Firefox a web browser. At its core Twitter is a micro-blogging service just as Firefox is a web browser. I have over 37 extensions (and growing) in my Firefox “internet toolkit”. Couple that with Google Docs, Facebook, and a sprinkling of Web 2.0 apps (including twitter) and it is difficult to find another tool on my computer I use even half as often as my “Web Browser”.
Trust me. If I can find 4 or 5 ways to use a micro-browser then there are others thinking of 40 or 50 ways.
Twitter is no Firefox yet. Keep in mind that Firefox is a relative newcomer to the browser wars. Twitter is in it’s infancy but it’s a big baby.
Speaking of other ways people are thinking about Twitter, I like the idea of channels. Now I am using Digsby and multiple twitter accounts to cut back on the noise. I am sure that someone will have that figured out soon.”
e.p. and 
Silicon Moon 9:55 am on May 20, 2008 Permalink |
Twitter, Tina Fey, and the Future of Micro-Blogging…
My op-ed at Mashable went up today. It’s a light piece that I had fun with. Thanks to Jill for editing and TechCrunch’s Mark Hendrickson, who provided his feedback….
e.p. 1:42 pm on May 20, 2008 Permalink |
Interesting read, I have to agree with the Tina Fey analogy. Your comments on the story were right on, although I tend to use twitter for friends, I can see how it could be molded into a variety of different tools….depending on who is using it. The one drawback I see in twitter, so far, has been their ability to scale with growth. I believe I read an article about how twitter is written in Ruby and that its not very easy to scale Ruby….also thought I heard that twitter was going to be re-written from the ground up. Another concern I have is how are they going to turn profit from twitter? In Japan, twitter has ads, they have said that the US version will continue to no-ads…..only time will tell.