Twitter Twitter Twitter - What's all the Fuss?

What exactly is Twitter?

Why is Twitter's exploding popularity so intriguing? How do we balance the realities of Facebook, Google, NING, Linked In, YouTube, Digg, Delicious, and even Yelp now to stay connected. When do we have quality time to simply focus and stay unconnected to think deeply on tough subjects? or .. Are we simply evolving as humans to be connected 24x7 in social mediated communities and our new DNA is collaboration on steroids.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application such as Twitterrific or Facebook. For SMS, four gateway numbers are currently available: short codes for the United States, Canada, and India, as well as a United Kingdom number for international use. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email.Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application such as Twitterrific or Facebook. For SMS, four gateway numbers are currently available: short codes for the United States, Canada, and India, as well as a United Kingdom number for international use. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email.

As of July 2008, over 2,200,000 accounts were registered.

Origin

Twitter's Update PageTwitter began as a research and development project inside San Francisco start-up company Obvious in March 2006. It was initially used internally by the company's employees, and officially launched in October 2006.

The service rapidly gained popularity: In March 2007, it won the 2007 South by Southwest Web Award in the blog category. Jack Dorsey, widely acknowledged as the man behind the concept of Twitter, gave the following playful acceptance speech at SXSW: "We'd like to thank you in 140 characters or less. And we just did!"

In April 2007, Obvious spun off the service as a separate entity under the name Twitter, Inc.,with Jack Dorsey as its CEO.

So what is the True Value of Twitter?

The company has raised $22M but has not revenue as their main strategy currently is to amass eyeballs and traffic, much like Facebook, and YouTube have done (both both have yet to generate profits).

From what I can see Twitter is a micro-blogging site and as a free service let's you send the briefest of messages to everyone on your network. It marries both blogging and text messaging, and now with its integration into Facebook -- these updates or "tweets" allow you to send short messages. So, what do you tweet about - like a stream of consiousness as people say: I am hungry, gone to the washroom, having a nap, going to bed, Boss in office now, Dark Knight rocks, Hillary falls big time, etc.

According to ComScore, Twitter has tripled this year in membership since last November with members fast approaching 4 million. We have companies like CNN send out newsalerts now on twitter, and even JetBlue sends its customer service updates via twitter. Even Cisco's CTO, Padmasreer Warrior twitters all day long. She recently twittered, "an aargh moment right now, forgot to pack my laptop power chord."

Some Venture capitalists see Twitter as an excellent example of the real-time web - we saw in blogs the beginning of longer communication - now we have shorter bursts of information via twitter tweets.

Despite its' infancy, Twitter is creating an ecosystem of communication dynamics that tweet about Macs, micro-reviews of Books, movies, restaurants - so for consumers mining this intelligence is where the value will come from.

Recently Twitter acquired Summize for an undisclosed amount which is a search engine entirely used for Twitter, as well Twitter can now display relevant ads much in the way that Google does so advertising revenue will soon come on stream.

Helix Web 3.0 Perspective

One thing for sure is that there is a new generation of vocabulary - blogs, podcasting, web 2.0, web 3.0, social mediated technologies, twitters and tweets, so if senior executives in companies are not keeping abreast of these new ways of collaborating and communicating - this creates a create deal of communication complexity in knowledge diffusion as the web is evolving in continued warp speed.

The only often to understand how these solutions can be applied in concrete business ways is to experience them first hand. I will be setting up Twitter integration on my blog site and my Facebook site, with the help of my 20 year old daughter. I am an active Facebook user, and been blogging now for awhile - here's to learning how to twitter and see what new conversations come my way.

One thing you can count on - if you are not part of the conversation - you simply won't know what is possible.

As business models continue to win based on higher levels of emotional IQ, I do believe we are well underway now in Social Mediated IQ and competitive advantage will intensify in these areas, as the Gen X and Gen Y's grow up even more. Let alone when the Generation V (Generation Virtual) come on stream graduating from the world of WebKinz, Club Penguin, There.com - we will soon have the first generation totally socialized with avatars.

This is the topic of my blog next. Sorry for being offline recently - been on vacation - and simply reading great books. I highly recommend Dealing with Darwin by Geoffrey Moore.