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Archive for April 2009

Mainstream Twitter April 12, 2009

The very first time I heard about Twitter was on Al3x Payne's blog around 2 years ago and I considered it as a nerdy realtime platform for sharing what you're doing with your geek friends, yeah geek friends since normal civilized people use the phone for this kind of things. I was convinced I would definitely not use it nor follow anyone on it. But time has passed and Twitter's traffic stats - hereabove snapshoted from compete.com - speak by themselves: Twitter is going mainstream. And although I'm still not converted to twittering, I have to admit it is fascinating to witness how a new platform is progressively becoming a mainstream tool. The basics Twitter is a realtime platform on which you can share what you're doing in less than 140 caracters. Using it is as simple as pronouncing its name: you create an account on http://twitter.com and start feeding it with your status, like "I'm eating noodles" or "Can't remember my PIN code". Each time you feel like sharing what you're doing, you log on Twitter and update your status. You can follow people's statuses and people can follow yours. This way you stay updated in real time of what everybody's doing around you. The power of APIs Twitter alone works well, but the smartest move was to build a powerful API for the web service. As I explained, illustrated and demonstrated in previous posts, a good web service must escape from its very own URL and start spreading all over the web (and beyond) through a powerful, reliable and secure API. Twitter has one and it works. Dozens of apps have been developped based so far: some of them enhance Twitter's default features (like adding pictures or creating groups of Twitterers), some bring Twitter to the desktop (mainly AIR apps), some mash up Twitter's data with anything else, etc. Twitter can now be fed from other websites, from your browser, from your mobile phone. Twitter's API made Twitter more reachable, more flexible and dramatically increased its presence. As confirmed by Twitter cofounder Biz Stone, Twitter API traffic is 10 times Twitter's site. Early criticisms Twitter encountered early criticisms - some of them justified. The service has often been down in the past - see TechCrunch's archive - which caused legitimate anger in the blogosphere. Some pointed the very language Twitter is built in (Ruby) and accused it of being too slow. Some attempted to describe how the very thing Twitter does makes it so hard to scale. Twitter's former architect was heavily criticized for not being able to properly manage Twitter's scaling. The very fact that Twitter has been early criticized is the best indicator of the tremendous interest early adopters had in the product. You'll never see such hate directed towards a web service no one cares about. Shown by big names I have to admit I've been quite amazed to see CNN's Richard Quest naturally looking at his laptop in the middle of Quest Means Business and readout recent Twitter updates about its very show. TV is an old and established media: not only does it show off Twitter to millions but it also participate in establishing Twitter to the rank of indispensable media. I doubt whether Facebook will ever make it to a TV show for what it really offers - of course Facebook will make it for Zuckerberg's karma or the challenges of preserving online intimacy. A Twitter ecosystem Twitter is part of the palette of services covered by social media consultants: people are making money out of Twitter through consulting fees. Freelancers are also showing a growing interest in offering Twitter freelance services: some webdesigners seem to be specialized in customizing Twitter accounts, another fancy name for building static pictures shown as the profile's background. Modern design weblogs are integrating Twitter backgrounds in their traditional lists posts and there's even a gallery dedicated to Twitter backgrounds. Vision and monetisation There is no official monetisation strategy announced yet, but it is said that Twitter wouldn't be sold for everything in the world. So there's a huge potential. The trendy analysis is to compare Twitter to Google and explain that Twitter is a realtime search engine whereas Google only searches in published websites and documents. It is true that it takes more time to write a blog post than to update a Twitter status. In a way, Twitter is like Reuters by and for individuals and it has shown its power during 2008's earthquake in China. We could imagine scientists checking out earthquake-related statuses on Twitter. Spam As shown in a recent article on RWW, Twitter users can be victim of spam. Spam stinks but it only goes where traffic goes. Spam forces the application to evolve and fight back to protect its users and, along with scaling, is one of the major challenge every big web service has to tackle. Again, had there been no buzz and no growing fame for Twitter, there would certainly have been no spam. The shorter the better The main reason of Twitter's success is surely its 140 caracters limit. Users are forced to cup the crap and only write what matters. This is perfectly in line with the behaviour of online people who don't read but scan - I would be very glad to know you have takent the time read my post so far but I wouldn't be surprised to learn you have only scanned the titles. Time matters and keeping it short ensures it can be updated in real time. CrunchBase Information Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase As far as I'm concerned though, I still can't remind to feed my Twitter account with fresh data. I would definitely need one of these Firefox plugins to update my status directly from the browser since browsing Twitter's very website is still far from natural for me.