EightBlack.

When I was at Web 2.0 Expo earlier this year - there was something that kept catching my eye. I don’t really know why.

At one of the hallways into the session rooms, there was a lonely plasma screen, displaying “Twitter” messages. To be honest, I never really got the hang of it but due to fear of missing out, I duly created and set up a Twitter account when I got home.

The first thing that impressed me is that that creators of Twitter quickly understood that there were other humans living to the west of San Francisco and to the East of New York. They enabled Twitter to handle international mobiles.

But let me back the truck up a bit.

Just what the hell is it?

Okay, according to the Twitter website:

“A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? Answer on your phone, IM, or right here on the web!”

For some strange reason, the Web 2.0 evangelists are in love with Twitter. And while it’s still in early adoption phase, the thing appears to be growing like an outbreak of the ebola virus. But then again, there’s a lot of techno geeks out there.

Here’s how it works in plain english.

(Side bar - if you are a techno phobe, hate mobile phones, hate texting, and long for the good old days when teenagers could actually string a real sentence together or would actually use a phone to talk on - then Twitter is going to tip you over the edge). You will, most probably, by the end of this post, lose the will to live entirely.

Anyway, here’s what happens.

The basic tenet to Twitter is it assumes you have friends. Or at least people who acknowledge you exist and who pretend to care about your meaningless life.

For example, I have just logged into my Twitter account and can simply write a text message into the 140 character message box that says: “I’m writing a blog post about Twitter”.

If you have friends - or people in your network via your Facebook, MySpace or Linked In accounts, they can see what you are up to, minute by every freakin’ agonising minute. And don’t worry, if you actually step outside of your window-less room, you can keep “twittering” on your mobile phone. You can link you GMail account, connect to Facebook and there are a heap of other applications developed or being developed by the day.

Unfortunately, social networking is here to stay. Whether or not I get it (at 41 years of age) is completely irrelevant. My 6 year old will. As will his 4 year old sister. And they are both sure to laugh at me - actually they do that already.

One thing is for sure, the mobile operators will make out like bandits with applications like Twitter because most people will use it when on the move. It will drive SMS/Text revenue through the roof. Kids have already figured out that a carrier with a good text plan rather than a voice plan is way more important to them. Kids I know (the ones that can still speak English) are capable of texting 30-50 messages a day. Not once though did they actually pick up the phone and press the send button. Which I think is utterly bizarre.

Twitter also has a very important local search spin to it - and perhaps this is what the founders of Twitter (and other apps like Pownce, & Frazr) are hoping is their big pay dirt moment. If you’re in a new city and looking for a restaurant, you can simply post the question to your network of “cyber friends” and hopefully get a response. It works if you are a famous blogger with a wide audience. But to the average Joe, you might go hungry. That’s when the “Almighty Algorithm” steps in (Google) and offers you suggestions. Voila, problem solved and Larry and Sergey are yet another click closer to nirvana.

Actually, one of the smartest things the lumbering old carriers could do is to acquire a Twitter like service (before a search company does). They have a subscriber base, an ability to scale (when they want to) and any application which drives revenue across a sunk cost infrastructure is highly desirable. The challenge is, I used to work for the big telcos, and many of them have a lot of senior people older than me, who struggle to switch on their PC’s in the mornings. Go ask them what the “zeitgeist” is and they’ll look at you with a blank expression, or say it is a Steven Spielberg movie about the Holocaust. Or something like that.

Reluctantly I think, Twitter will continue to accelerate. It’s the future (or a big part of). For some strange reason, there’s a generation of folks who want to communicate this way, and who feel the need to tell other people what they are doing at every waking moment of the day. Obviously, these people don’t have children. Or aren’t married.

But I just can’t wrap my head around it. When I’m in San Francisco next month at Web 2.0, I know everyone will be “twittering” like crazy. I promise to try and embrace it - but I’m warning you that it could all go pear shaped.

Maybe it already has. For me at least.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 6:39 am 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.