Valley PR Blog

Len Gutman Says:
March 27th, 2007 at 9:03 am

Angelo,

Mike McClary is using it. http://www.mikemcclary.com

Len

danwool Says:
March 28th, 2007 at 9:22 am

Let me see if I understand Twitter. The site plays people’s bored texting off as some kind voyeuristic haiku and a way to deeply connect? Oh look! Someone else is picking his nose too! Let’s be friends!

Seriously though, Angelo does bring up a good point about application.

I do see the social benefit if I’m watching a Tottenham Hotspur match in Phoenix and so is someone in India – we can connect. But that sort of interaction seems to be a fraction of who’s on the site (see “nosepicking” above).

It also feels more like a social feature that can part of the “digital living room” (Skype?) of the future. I can see a variation on TiVo. “4700 other people are watching this right now.” You could search the Twitter texts, sort the list, enter a chat room, blog/see blogs about it, etc. (BTW Twitter, no fee for the business model upgrade).

On Edwards: The interesting thing with John Edwards’ twittering (new verb?) is that people *actually care* about him. He is running for President; he is a very public man; where he goes and what he does is significant to supporters, media, etc. People have a need to “catch up with him”. However, I’d argue that his team are using Twitter not for utility but because it’s the buzz -it seems less about connecting with the audience than using the “cool factor” to gain a foothold into a young, branded grass-roots audience.

Blogs, MySpace have strong utility. Howard Dean in 2000. My.Obama this year – these are natural uses of the technology.

I’m not sure about this one. It seems like opt-in searchable chat with a cool name. It seems like a brainstorm of a generation raised with a video camera in its face that is made to feel their every action is worthy and important to the reinforcement of their self esteem. I think full disclosure is sometimes too much information.

Angelo Says:
March 28th, 2007 at 12:48 pm

Dan, you’ve opened this up in the way I hoped. Too much navel gazing, if done for the sake of it, makes it just another app. BUT, like blogging, as most of us remember, it looked a lot like that when it first appeared on the horizon (“who has time to read someone’s boring online diary?”) but it soon evolved into another unique form of communication, totally unrelated to a diary of nose picking.

And your point about how it could be integrated into experiences such as the digital living room is very valid. Someone’s going to mash up this application with something totally unthinkable, and we could be pleasantly surprised. I could see conferences using it as a kind of a back-channel for attendees, or it could be applied to a big widespread event. A group of reporters at the 2008 Olympics, or covering some crisis could alert each other about different parts of a story…

The other thing about an application like this is the platform –mobile phones– makes it a very inexpensive way to communicate in real time.

Cortland Coleman Says:
March 29th, 2007 at 9:57 pm

Lots of intereting people including myself, Rene Gutel and as Len said, Mike McClary, are Twittering. Admittedly, there is a bit of navel-gazing involved, but just a few of Twitter’s strong suits include its go-anywhere funtionality, great event coordination potential – as demonstrated at SXSW, and when mashed up with 3rd party apps ala twittermap.com, the ability to connect with people instantly. A growing number of influencers are using it and I would urge all here to sign up (it’s free), give it try and explore the possibilities.