Like most people with a career/interest in the online world, I’ve spent a fair amount of time coming up with ideas for internet startups and businesses. Some are quite fanciful, but others have a reasonable business case behind them. And sometimes, some were implemented by other people because I didn’t move fast enough or didn’t have enough passion.
But just about the only thing I wish I’d invented was Twitter, and it’s nothing to do with the money.
Instead, my wish is because Twitter is becoming successful due to a convergence of various elements which combined into a perfect storm. And on the timeline of digital communication, from IRC and newsgroups, through forums and silo’d and semi silo’d social networks, Twitter is the beginning of the next stage of an evolution which is perhaps 20% of the way to it’s ultimate evolution.
Twitter’s perfect storm:
- The ability to initiate conversations and self-form communities of purpose (Thanks Dave) on the fly.
- The integration of fixed internet and mobile.
- The simplified nature of the core service – 140 characters, @ replies and # hashtags. That’s it…except…
- The external ecosystem and open API which has produced an almost infinite list of tools and services -meaning there’s almost a suitable tool for every individual user, and if not, wait another minute and there will be!
- The growing understanding of the utility of providing customer service quickly and efficiently – leading brands towards the idea of VRM.
- It’s asynchronous, with the ability to be synchronous.
- It’s ‘Many-to-Many’ communication.
Those are just my initial thoughts – I’m sure there’s at least a couple of things I’ve missed. Do add more in the comments.
20%? Really?
There’s a tendency to see the existing state of things as continuing forever – but nowhere is that further from the truth than in the digital (Fixed internet and mobile) world. For example, from Friendster (2002) , to Myspace (2003), to Facebook (2004), to Twitter (2006), to Friendfeed (2007). (Dates from Wikipedia).
There are still large numbers of people who don’t have access to the internet throughout the world (whether via PC or Mobile). There are large numbers who don’t see the value and haven’t joined a social network. And there are countless companies and businesses who aren’t even close to understanding how to use new channels effectively, and the effect it will have on their business strategy and practices. And advertisers (and therefore lots of the money in content), are way behind.
But there’s a growing number of people who are familiar with the principles of the Cluetrain, even if they’ve never read it. They’re picking it up by living as part of it, and as my friend Tim recently commented on one of my blog posts,
I can’t wait to see the next generation do something with the mature version of the tech having grown up with it being nothing to be afraid of…
But while we’re waiting, the older generations are coming to Facebook and Twitter – and whether or not you’d pick Friendster, Myspace, Facebook or something else as the definition of early Web 2.0 and the social networked world, I’d guarantee Twitter would be the main name quoted for the next version. And there’s nine more before we even get to Web 3.0!