Billions With Zero Knowledge

I admit it. I heart my Twitter. It’s fun and is forming a new way to keep in touch with my friends as I engage in an informal back channel conversation occurring throughout the day.

You can follow my Twitter conversations here - http://twitter.com/austinhill

I don’t find it distracting, with just an IM window quietly sitting there with a soft stream of interesting notes from my friends. I don’t have updates via SMS enabled so my phone isn’t ringing all the time with updates.

Many would call it a perfect viral service, but I hate that viral meme (See my Viral Manifesto) so IMHO it’s the perfect definition of an authentic service that creates emotional bonds that you just want to share with friends.

I got a chance to speak with Evan Williams at the TED conference, where Twitter sort of took off as Loic Le Meur, Jeff Clavier, Michael Parekh, Evan and I were Twittering the TED conference. (at least those were the people I was following who were Twittering. If you were there and I missed you let me know.)

Occurring at the same time Twitter groups were self organizing meetups and conversations were flowing in preparation for SWSX and all of sudden a firestorm of Twitter activity occurred.

I think Twitter hit a tipping point last week and everyone I know who is using it has quickly become addicted to it. Most of my friends I’ve spoken to it are afraid to touch it for fear of another Internet habit to occupy their already busy schedule. Twitter may just become the Tribbles of the Internet.

A number of great posts started to show up about Twitter. Here are some of the good ones I read,

• Anil Dash - Consider Twitter
• Ross Mayfield - Twitter tips the Tuna
• Mathew Ingram - Twitter is noice, but also signal
• Jason Calacanis - Twitter on fire ….
• Ben Yoskovitz - Join the Twitter Ranks
• Mitch Joel - Twitter Is To Blogging What Post-It Notes Are To Notebooks

There are tons of other posts as many people lit a fire of discussions about Twitter taking off.

This got me thinking about how careful the Twitter team and the community of users and developers of new Twitter tools need to be with this new medium.

There have been some great emergent uses of this tool.

• Robert Scoble was looking for help with an introduction to the Joost team that I was able to help with which was cool.
• Joi and I kicked up a conversation about Fatblogging and my new SwiMP3 goggles.
• Tara asking for instant feedback and some references before a presentation.
• Jonathan Boutelle (SlideShare’s CTO) must have Googled across my comment about Slideshare needing audio, and instantly introduced himself and let me know where their roadmap was going. Great customer service tip for anyone out there. Google your name, and instantly reach out to people talking about you. I felt incredible about the Slideshare team and will continue to play with the service as they add more features because of this simple personal service.
• @username broadcast chat conversations
• event organizing for conference parties at SWSX
• backchannel discussions of audience members during panel presentations, and TED talks
• @dictionary by Kosso (very cool)

All this attention and a remark from Calcanis on Twitter last night about commercializing a Pay-Per-Twitter idea got me thinking about how precarious this type of popularity could be for the service.

The infamous Tribbles were endearing to all who came in contact with them (well except Klingons). But they multiplied endlessly. Tribbles became a nuisance quickly as they overran the ship and ruined the party.

Twitter works for me because it’s social. My friends and followers are sharing parts of their day that interest me. I enjoy sharing parts of my day with those who read my blog and follow me on Twitter.

These activities have already created some interesting new conversations, and is bringing me closer to friends that I don’t see enough.

If someone were to start Spittering @ me (SpamTwittering) this would ruin it for me, and I would remove them. I don’t want commercial or overly self promtional Twitter users in my social network.

Like with all communities, there will be plenty of opportunities to build revenue around Twitter - but I don’t think it will be in the area of marketing. Leave marketing out of this unique conversation and the revenue opportunities will come from the community as new emergent behaviours and uses allow for premium services or unique tool offerings.

Tara has a good post about her concerns about the rising popularity of Twitter, read the comments to see some of the debate about Twitter.

I would happily pay for a premium Twitter bot construction kit that would allow me to integrate various Twitter rules & personal reminders in a Yahoo Pipes fashion to build my own Twitter services. There are a number of other premium features I would pay a reasonable annual fee for as well.

We need to think of Twitter like Flickr not like MySpace.

Small communities, within communities. Personal relationships. Emergent games and new forms of communication. Not adwords, pay-per-twits or spittering.

On Fri 16 Mar 2007.