Recently I have been taken with the whole idea of micro blogging in the form of Twitter. It’s simply an amazing tool that is such a simple idea, I can’t imagine why it has not been developed long ago. I mean on the surface it’s not the most amazing set-up. You get a one basic profile page, which you can change the colours and background image, along with one link to your desired landing page.
But that is the beauty of Twitter and something that I hope the creators keep as the ethos of the service. Being only able to type 140 characters stops it becoming a blog. Having it link to everything else (Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc) means it’s not like them, it’s something different. In some ways it’s the glue that was missing.
Just this week I was tweeting away about things. Your everyday ramblings that you wonder why anyone would be interested in following, when I struck up a lovely conversation with a woman in California. I was talking about the latest Wacom tablets, nothing that exciting and unbeknown to me this conversation was with a lady called Karen Sperling. For those like me who didn’t know who this lovely woman is, she is the writer of the first four Corel Painter manuals. We got chatting and I realised I was talking to someone very knowledgeable from the comfort of my home, while she was chatting away from her home in beautiful California. Here is someone in normal life I would never usually meet and she was willing to share her thoughts and expertise with me.
I’ve had lots of experiences like this since getting involved with Twitter. I have made very good business contacts, started some great friendships and been able to meet people whom I genuinely have much in common with or a similar interest. All without any false agendas or pre-arranged boundaries, just good old fashion conversations and relationship building in a modern way. That’s why I don’t like these people who want try to sell you how to make a million followers. How can you have a real relationships with a million people you got in contact with through an automated system, that leave people a greeting and then they’re not available ever again.
I’ve used Bebo, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, you name it since Social Media got a name and I always liked somethings and didn’t like others about all of them. What really bothered me and continues today is that you’re repeating your content over and over again, because you have friends connected to different offerings from different companies. And after all let’s not forget that there is a war going on between these organisations. Yes a war! I only have to think of the early days of search engines to remember how many there were, fighting to grab our attention, to offer a different experience than the other, but I bet you’d be hard pushed to remember many of them now (all geeks excluded).
In the end the same will happen to the various forms of web 2.0. They will all fight and either buy or wipe each others services out, until only a few remain. Who will be those remaining brands that we will trust, like we now trust all our search enquiries to Google or Yahoo? Only recently Facebook announced that it is going to offer a video service not unlike YouTube. And already we are forgetting the many social sites that have come and gone in the first wave of casualties in this war.
I for one find this battle exciting times for the growth of ‘Social Media’. It’s like a space race and we all know the best ideas are born in competition. While all the other services get more clever and complex, combining with other sites and claiming to offer the user a more exciting experience, Twitter has only to sharpen what they are already doing, being the link to the best of what we like in the services being provided.
Derek – Just read your blog. Too many people never think beyond the present. You not only do that, you have a perspective that most people don’t.
I happen to agree with you and eventually we’ll end up with fewer choices through corporate stealing, mergers, lawsuits, etc.
The thing I get somewhat concerned about is all the meaningless blather on the social media.
I wonder what’s going to happen when the novelty wears off.
No matter – the decision-makers at corporate America will make many of the decisions for us and, of course, those will not be based on service, but their bottom line.
Mark – I appreciate your comment and your kind words. Glad you agree with my perspective and eventual outcome of social media sites.
I can understand your concerns about SM being a novelty and decreasing with popularity once the initial burst comes to an end. However, I really don’t think that web 2.0 will be a simple trend. Corporations are rushing ahead to get control over these emerging technologies, in hope of shaping what we read, believe, think and off course what we buy.
But in my opinion, we are living in a moment in time when the technologies available to us are giving us a freedom that is a blimp in the plans of the corporate world. Many of us small fish are now finding ourselves in a more level playing field. Collaboration and interaction is the way to embrace social media, helping small companies or individuals gather resources and strengthen our reach on a global scale.
Yes, I agree. A sort of “glue”.
I think of services like Twitter and Friendfeed more as the town square where people meet and step through on their way to the different shops and attractions that surround the square.
Facebook made an effort to change their stream to be a bit more like Twitter, but it isn’t Twitter. I can see Tumblr getting eaten by Facebook except its easier and less expensive for Facebook to integrate it until the time comes that Tumblr is only useful as a facebook app and gets absorbed.
I don’t know what Twitter’s future is. I think we’ll always find value in tools that allow us to rethink and improve the way we communicate with others. Perhaps that will involve Twitter in the future. Perhaps it won’t. History says that it probably won’t. At least, not without a lot of changes.
Very fun times!
The race among some of the biggest online companies to reveal more of the instant opinions and information flooding across the internet in real time has intensified, with Microsoft and Facebook each announcing important initiatives in recent days.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/da56bdc6-6730-11de-925f-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Social activity aggregator FriendFeed, which re-designed earlier this year to show updates from friends in real-time, has just extended that same functionality to search. Now, when you search for a given term – like “Michael Jackson” – you’ll see updates from FriendFeed users stream in real-time in your browser.
http://mashable.com/2009/07/02/friendfeed-real-time-search/
Power.com Sues Facebook: Data Ownership War Breaks Out
http://mashable.com/2009/07/09/power-sues-facebook/
As I mention in this article, further battles continue as social media companies go to court.