For my readers who may be unaware, another phase of Internet-centered communications advances is upon us. As my good friend Jack Latona might say, they just aren’t widely distributed… yet. I’m urging those who don’t usually tune-in to the latest and greatest until after folks on the cutting edge stop bleeding to get familiar - now - with the ideas behind the terms “Web 2.0” and “Social Media.”
With that in mind, today I’m going to introduce you to Twitter. It is definitely within the realms of both of the aforementioned new-fangled terms. And it is something that I instinctively know will be some sort of “next big thing.” That’s the oddest truth about Twitter: nearly everyone who uses it for a while finds it indispensable but we can’t describe it well. Most users believe that Twitter (or something very much like it) will become as much a part of our daily lives as email, but we still can’t tell you precisely why that will be the case.
Even explaining what Twitter is presents challenges. OK, it’s a means of “microblogging,” as if that helps. Rather than bore you with technical jargon, I’ll point you to this because it’s a good start:
But that’s all the video is: A good start. By the way, the video is by the good folks at Common Craft. I’ll have to do a post about that great company later; they’re really embedded in the Web 2.0 wave.
Yes, I “tweet” (jargon for Twitter posts) about the mundane daily life things, but I also post questions I have, random thoughts, inspirations, complaints and just about any other stream of thought stuff that used to just blink into my consciousness and then disappear, unnoted and unshared, forever.
And then, there are the stories about companies already having successes from following the grand thread of all life that is Twitter’s public timeline page. Dell Computer has apparently sold half a million dollars worth of computer equipment through Twitter in the past few months. The list of companies using it for business is growing.
We won’t talk about the recent down time. We have to be used to things that are free having growing pains as their popularity nears a tipping point. That’s what I chalk the recent outages up to. And you should too.
I predict that most of the people I work with will be communicating with me on Twitter real soon. Print this page and save it. You might have heard it hear first; not that I’m the first to say it, but based on the profile of my typical reader, it’s probably news.
Whither Twitter? Right here. Right now.
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