EightBlack.

I get Mahalo. (I think).

I get Facebook. MySpace. And any other “social networking” site out there.

I get Google Apps. I get Android. I get Ning.

In fact, I get (but perhaps don’t agree with) most “Web 2.0″ properties. I get why Google is prepared to spend a Saudi King’s ransom on wireless spectrum.

But here’s what I don’t get.

Twitter and Second Life.

Let’s take one at a time.

Let’s talk about Twitter. Now I know it’s caused a stir in the digital world and has become something of a darling within the social networking hemisphere with countless imitators popping up everywhere but I just, for the life of me, can’t get my head around it.

Maybe I’m too old. Maybe 41 is the wrong age in this industry.

Anyway.

Twitter refers to itself as a “micro-blogging” site where, by using what is essentially a text based interface capped at 140 characters, you tell people what you are doing every waking minute of the day. You can do it via the web. Via your mobile. Anywhere you are connected.

Here’s what my Twitter account looks like.

You could probably assume a couple of things looking at this.

One is that I’m a Twitter loser and don’t have many friends. In which case, you’d be right. The other is that my friends on Twitter are losers and need to get a life. Which is probably also true.

I get the whole communicating via SMS thing. Three years ago, we built an SMS gateway for a telco client. It’s still in use today and they have, quite honestly spent a small fortune on this, for which I am eternally grateful. And there is no better way, in this day and age to communicate with a large group of people instantly than SMS. Forget email. Forget calling. SMS wins hands down. Everytime.

What I just don’t get is rattling on about what I’m doing every bloomin’ minute of the goddam day. I mean, my own family don’t care what I do, so why would my friends?

Take for instance the writing of this blog post. I’m sitting in a trendy pub, glass of wine in hand, listening to the thing called “life” going on around me, while connected to the internet, writing this. Now some would argue, you ARE a loser, sitting on your own in a pub, the week before Xmas, looking into the screen of you MacBook.

Perhaps.

But the last thing I want to do is tell my virtual Web 2.0 friends what I’m doing. Hell, I’m grateful for the peace and quiet. No email. Can’t hear the damn phone over the desperate “touch rugby” wankers trying to pick up drunk women. Just peace and quiet in a sort of noisy Thursday night, Prahran pub type of way.

Those Melbournians who read this will understand. Those of you who are in the US, will just have to imagine your favourite bar, with the Cornhuskers playing Texas A&M the on the big screen. Same women. Same drunk “touch rugby” wankers or their equivalent.

Or something like that.

Look, if I have a screw loose, then email me and tell me. No doubt, my 7 year old son gets Twitter. But I don’t. So there.

Right then. Let’s move on to Second Life.

Look, all I’ll say is that I have enough trouble coping with my first life than to worry about a second one. This is one gig I clearly don’t understand. Maybe don’t even want to.

You go into the site, take on the persona of someone else, interract with other people who do the same and use the word “avatar” a lot. Whatever the hell that means. If you ask me, it reminds me of marriage. Ok, that’s a bit cyncial. And I hope my wife doesn’t read this. Strewth!

Here’s the official description of the site:

The insane part to all this is that people buy and trade just about everything, from real estate to cars to commodities, in their own currency, called “Linden dollars”, which apparently can be converted into US dollars at a Nigerian Currency Exchange booth at your local flea market.

Madness!

In a year where Google got stronger and bigger, Yahoo! got smaller and more confused, Facebook became the overnight $15 billion dollar darling, and the VC’s got smarter and ran away, some things still continued to perplex even the most rational of people.

That’s Second Life. And that’s normal in this digital day and age.

As 2007 draws to a close, maybe it’s time to look back and reflect at what the internet has created. The sad thing is this. Perhaps only 20% of business really gets it. One things for sure. Digital properties like Twitter and Second Life might last and they might not. One thing is certain though. They’ve ruined every textbook case study out there about creating niche markets .

Which promises for an exciting year ahead, don’t you think?

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 at 8:24 pm and is filed under Social Networking, Twitter, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.