Kevin Wolski

Over the past few weeks I’ve engaged in numerous conversations surrounding Twitter, its purpose, its awesomeness and its survival. I thought it was time for me to formally submit my take on the whole Twitter idea to the interwebs for all to read and comment on.

An initial caveat:The main commentary of this post is based around my experience as a web technology professiononal and enthusiast. I don’t have an MBA and my only formal business training has been sitting though a painfully boring microeconomics class as an undergrad.

To start let me cite the source and define what Twitter is. This is only necessary for any  ex-hermit readers out there experiencing the Internet and running water for the first time.

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

Simple and succinct, but fascinatingly powerful! Before the rambling begins about how something this simple in concept is so powerful, I would like to make two comments on Twitter’s formal definition. You don’t just have to follow your tech hip grandma; strangers and organizations are game too, and they are probably more interesting and beneficial. Correlating your posts to the question: “What are you doing?” should be revised. Sure, let everyone know you’re headed out to catch Britney Spears in concert, but also voice your opinion, share your thoughts and services, and hell, share an LOL cat once in a while. “What are you doing?” is just one angle in the shape that is Twitter. Here’s how I read the definition as someone who works with web technology and as a Twitter user:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers society to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? snippets of information.

It’s Like Salt, Less is More

Art has always played an important role in my life. I passed over joining the Boy Scouts and playing sports, for something less traditional for a middle schooler: I took oil painting lessons. My elderly painting teacher taught me many lessons, but her idea of relating creation to the use of salt: “less is more”, is a concept that rings true to me all the time. Twitter fits this mold. A brush stroke on a cave wall to Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Both are born from an initial simple action. One doesn’t move past a certain state, while the other is compounded with additional simple fundamental actions. Both are powerful in their own right. Twitter can follow this same convention. An individual can create a simple thought; it can stand out there in the World, informing, annoying, humoring, inspiring. It may get overlooked, lose relevance or become outdated but it was there. On the other hand, that idea can grow and transform in the hands and minds of those who see it and act upon it. Less is more. It’s a powerful concept, which I probably wouldn’t have learned playing soccer. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against intramural sports.

OK, It’s Seasoned. Now What?

Just as there are different reasons for one’s use of Twitter, as I mentioned in the opening of this post; Twitter’s power and importance is comprised of other sub components surrounding the ideas of efficient collection, growth and dissemination of information (essentially a refined concept of the Internet). So what am I trying to get at? Dissemination of information, that’s what. You’ve already made it past my overly artsy definition of Twitter’s power as an information aggregator and information breeder, but the other benefit of Twitter is how it pukes out this data to the world.

Following the Followers

This section is going to be a change of pace,  it is going to be short and to the point. One way Twitter displays data is by displaying follower links to other profiles, which have follower links to other profiles, which have follower links to other profiles… Profiles which you can follow yourself. “Isn’t that like Facebook friends?” Yep. It is a social web requirement and nothing new, just a standard way to relay information. Powerful, yes. New idea? Hell no.

Searching for Answers

All Internet users are quite familiar to searching for information. Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, you name it, we’ve all used them to find stuff on the web. We’ve used site searches to find information contained within a certain website. Twitter has this too! Why the exclamation point you ask? Because Twitter search isn’t your normal search. “Really? Doesn’t it just search through the information (tweets) contained on Twitter.com?” Yep. We need to look past just the actions of searching for content. Who cares how you get to the content, as long as you get to the content. The content is king (sorry P. Diddy).

When you do a Google search, you get a listing of websites relevant to your search topic. These websites can be created by any number of individuals or organizations, just like tweets. Search results are all truncated pieces of content that “should” provide some insight for information that can be obtained else where, or absorbed on the spot. Tweets can function like this as well. So how are they different? Well, ranking comes into play with Google results, and recency comes into play with Tweet searches, but that’s not all. Tweets have a different meaning than a website returned in a Google search. Someone needs to make a conscience decision to”Tweet” about something, good, bad, the point doesn’t matter, the intent to create does. That idea of intent is what makes Twitter search different than what most people are used to on the web. It is a little more human, and perhaps over time could be seen as a little more trustworthy. “Can’t I do that on Facebook too?” Yep. Go for it. The nice thing about Twitter is that it is open, so you can run a search without having to log in, or perhaps be confined by certain privacy settings. Twitter has the ability to be providing a broader scope for a search, which could yield a better result.

Twitter search’s “brand new” sticker is hanging on strong and doesn’t show any signs of curling just yet. Will it kill off the beast that is Google Search? I’d bet against Twitter in that case. As Twitter grows in user base, and consequently in “Tweets”, or indexed data, it can provide a different “social” search experience for a user, that may be beneficial than say a basic search engine or site search.

Searching for a Use Case

I recently purchased a netbook, which I’m using right now to create this entry. I love it and wanted to buy a cool bag to keep it safe and carry it around with all my tech accessories. I wanted something compact, but had a little extra storage room. Not into the sleeve, didn’t want it to just look like a mini Targus bag, and I sure as hell didn’t want something that looked like a man-purse. I naturally began my quest like any Internet shopper does, I searched Google, Amazon and other websites for the term “netbook bag”. Simple enough right? Not so easy, netbooks are still catching on, and the results returned for my simple search illustrated the “netbook bag” offerings were reflecting the adoption rate of this new hardware trend. Nothing matched what I was looking for. I had an idea… maybe someone “tweeted” about “netbook bag”. Sure enough, hundreds had. I easily found a link to a forum discussing netbook bags through one of the tweets returned in my Twitter search, which was scraping a “social index”. 20 pages of posts talking about netbook bag options! Using this resource I located the kind of bag I was looking for with an actual human confirming it fit a netbook like mine. Sure enough, fits snug and secure and is working out well. Days of searching Google and Amazon didn’t help me find an answer as fast as using Twitter search. Searching a “social index” is a concept that is going to start becoming more relevant as the social web evolves and grows.

Getting Down to Business

So Twitter isn’t just a simple fad. It possess more breadth and usefulness than many people care to admit or take the time to investigate through the reading of this blog post. Turn on the news and you hear about Twitter all the time, you may also hear news that it isn’t currently making enough money. Bottom line is, is that it needs to make some more dough to stay alive. Venture capital can only take it so far for so long. Below are some of growing ideas on how Twitter can make some money and keep itself a float and the social web growing.

Paid Accounts – This has already been confirmed and is in the works. This should provide a decent stream of revenue similar to how YouTube charges organizations for “Branded” Channels, or flickr and pro accounts. If I were Twitter I’d make sure I charged larger companies higher prices, they can afford it.One worry I have is correlating different accounts to Tweet length. This is dumb. I am citing the sections “It’s Like Salt, Less is More” and “Searching for Answers” to defend my point that moving past 140 characters is not a good idea.Idea: Providing a paid account analytics for their Twitter page, i.e. demographics, location, visits, unique visits etc, would be supremely valuable for not just organizations, but individuals.Idea: Paid accounts could have their re-tweets tracked, which could bubble up their content in a search feature (think Google sponsored links) or on other areas of the site. This could help drive traffic for a Twitter user and grow followers.

Ads – Duh. No brainer. Lots of relevant information to serve ads off of. I’m betting CPM would be healthy and profitable, if they were to implement a third party option. They also have the ability to serve ads like Facebook, selling the real estate by user demographics or Tweet contents.Paid accounts could have the option to not see ads. Free accounts wouldn’t be adversely affected if the ads we implemented ethically. Internet users are going so ad blind as it is, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were people who didn’t even notice.

In Closing

Thanks for checking out this blog entry. I hope my take on Twitter has helped you derive your own opinion and hopefully got you thinking about the emerging trends in the landscape of the social web, Twitter being one of them.

I’d love to hear your thoughts! Feel free to make a comment here, or you can find me on Twitter: kdwolski