A follow up on Twitter

Just a quickly follow up on my previous post. I am not sure I made my point so well. I don’t mean to say we do not have a lot of applications possible from mining twitter information. I read this article (How NPR Tweets Topical Archive Material) and I really liked the idea. How a program identifies trends in Twitter and publishes content from existing material which will support the trend.

I actually Twittered about this article where we learn about some of the usage a company can use the information in Twitter to understand how ‘the mob’ perceives the company.

My issue I suppose is not so much about what can be done about the data but the incentive there is for people to Twitter. It is definitely a fad at the moment, people join just to be in. Technically I am joining to find out what the fuss is all about. I suppose its strength is the asymmetric associations which allows you to follow someone without first requiring their approval.

The conflict for me is that the benefits depend on the information entered and you can only enter 100 characters. You can only really enter keywords and then link to other page with the full information. That is quite restrictive.

Maybe the quick fix for me would be to just allow entering as many as you want and then it is a nice and easy way to have a blog. Maybe I just don’t get it and it will become a real source of information and not just a marketing tool.

Will twitter survive?

I know a lot of people have been writing about this already, I probably don’t have that much more to add that has not yet already seen but I do not get it. I can’t see how it can survive.

Here is what I know:
- You can only enter about 100 characters, this means you can reference information or not say too much. I suppose that is why it is called micro blogging. Of course referencing other pieces of information is very useful but as to publishing some, you can only really give a quick status update. I have been following a few people and unless I have some background on their status, it does not really say much.
- You can follow anyone you want and they don’t even have to approve you. Cool for me, it is a bit embarrassing to have to refuse someone because you don’t really know them well enough. On the other hand, you might end up by having so many followers that you don’t really know anymore who you are saying things to. That must be quite a restriction, of course I don’t really know, but it is not about sharing your status with your friends anymore.
- You can send messages directly to someone, whether you are following them or not. If you are a fairly popular person, again which I am not, that can make it very difficult for you to keep up with the ones you actually care about.
- There is certainly a good reach, lots of tools for you to be able to post from lots of different devices. The benefit of an open API I suppose.
- There are ways for now to search/tag/monitor the data going through twitter. This is great stuff, I remember looking at a map of the world and a popup would come up every time someone would twitter.
- They do not seem to have any business model yet. In this day in age, that is a small miracle. It does say a lot about how popular this is.
- Every now and then some suspicious user is trying to get me to follow them, I suppose we should invent a new word for this, it could be micro-spam.

I can see the benefit for a company to look for keywords about the company, the product and keep a pulse on what is being said. It seems to be a very good PR tool. It seems to have been used a lot during key and significant events.
Maybe I just don’t get it, but I still don’t really see the point. I can’t say anything of consequence, I could be referencing something I wrote from somewhere else but then I could just write it in Facebook and all the people I do care about will read it from there.
At this point twitter seems to be used so you can update your status in other applications at the same time, again the benefit of open APIs, but I can’t see why it can’t be done in the other ones.
You can apparently follow publishers you care about and read the news that way, but I already have a news reader, is twitter giving me anything different?
The bands, famous people and companies seem to be using it to be cool and publish ‘good’ information about them. They have other people populating the information for them.

If it stops being a fad, what else is there? Is it more a reflection on the fact that we focus less and for shorter period of time and all we can come up with is about 100 characters? Maybe I am just missing the point, the fad is the point and it will always be there. Some part of me can only hope that it is not the case. Maybe all we need is easier tools for blogging and we can still make quick and easy posts to the web for all to know.

Where is the internet going?

I am sure it is not an easy answer, we can try to look at where we have been, where we are and predict where it will go. But that is not really going to work.

I use the Internet all the time without even knowing I am, kind of. I work from home using VPN, I use an RSS reader, a webcam, social networks, etc. I just joined a French social web site and I have finally started to reconnect with some of my old pals. Although it seems most of them are not really there. I have to say we do not really watch TV as much, most of the shows are available on-line, when it is convenient for me to watch and not when the network think I should.

I am probably a bit behind my times, I refuse to put my list of contacts on the internet, I don’t really trust any location would be that secure for sensitive information. I have been resisting using something like Mint, putting all my $ information for all to hack or steal, seems way to sensitive. For those, I use a local (desktop) application and make sure I backup all the files. I am not sure whether I would actually publish my location with Google latitude yet, but I know someone who did and I often check to see where they are.

Now there seem to be 2 currents to look into. The whole web 2.0 towards web 3.0 (semantic web) and also now about Software as a service and all. We have so much information, I can only hope we will find a way to organize it better and personalize it a little bit more. I have not really used Amazon’s storage services yet but I can see how it is where we will eventually all go. Having my own drives to maintain and backup, with all the pictures and movies I have, it becoming a bit of a burden. You have to like the idea of someone else handling that for you and not to have to worry about noise in your office and how to scale without denting your savings.

Some of the reason for why I am a bit behind has to do with lack of internet access at home. For a while (a long while) we only had a one way cable connection (that means ok download and really bad upload speed) and no real other alternative. I have no reception with my cell phone at home and so the mobile phone is not really always on. I also try to make sure people from work find me easily accessible through my personal mobile phone. Uploading my Flickr pictures has been a pain for a very long time. But now we have a dual cable connection, I feel I can finally see the light. Most services are finally viable. I am afraid the US will not really be at the forefront of the internet revolution until we all have a decent access to the internet.

Once Internet access is granted and we have figured out the privacy issues, look at all the issues Facebook had, and when data packages for mobile phones are a little cheaper, I believe the Internet will be in everything we do. I am still not sold on watching shows on such a small screen though. Once that happens, Google will be able to give us tailored searches based on where we are and what we like. Ideally also based on time of day, am I asking about tech job related things or am I just trying to find a place to eat? People’s life will be mostly on the internet for all of us to see. We will have some video standard and we can watch each other without worrying about which program I should be running to be able to see a specific individual (Skype, MSN, GTalk, …). Geographical disparity will no longer means we cannot stay involved in each other’s life anymore. The world will indeed be a lot flatter then.

Corrections:
I am now a fan of Hulu, I do not need to be in front of the TV at the right time in order to be able to watch my favorite shows. I have been using streaming videos from Netflix for a while but I find the selection a little disappointing. I plug the computer into the TV, so no more small screen. On the bad side, I must be watching too much now. I need to catch up with current offerings so I can go back to my old life.

A friend of mine has an apple TV, he linked to my flickr account so I could show off my pictures. Unfortunately the resolution was a bit weird so overall a bit disappointing. But I see now that soon we will have media boxes, blur the line between TV, internet and what not. Apparently Microsoft Media Player is pretty good, I am just afraid if I get started I will never have time for physical activities or family time anymore. As we watch the shows, we will have links to youtube videos about the movie, Wikipedia articles for the location and historical references. We will not need DVD and their special features anymore. Is Blu-ray still viable with so many internet services providing HD downloads? Add the social dimension to this and you can recommend movies, compare notes. Just imagine, there would be no need to have screening anymore, you can target the whole web and develop your film while it is being reviewed. Not sure networks and distributors will ever agree to a standard that would be necessary for this to happen.