Why Twitter is Important 
Friday, May 29, 2009, 03:15 AM - Technology
Posted by Greg Herlein
I've been telling friends about Twitter recently. Some of these friends are technical, some aren't, but all of them are Internet savvy. Some of these folks use social networks already, but some don't. All of my friends are heavy email users, and some even have blogs. A few jumped in with both feet right away and are in the twittersphere. The naysayers are skeptical. The number one question they ask about Twitter is "why should I care?" In general, they think of Twitter as another fad, or maybe another Facebook. One or two even see Twitter as a service that is primarily used by twenty-somethings that are so self-absorbed that they want a way to announce to the world every inane thing they are thinking and doing.

Of course, Twitter is all that.

And, it's so very, very much more.

I see Twitter as the leading edge of a whole new kind of Internet application. Email is great when you want to convey some information to a select group of folks and you don't care so much when they read it. Instant Messages (IM) are good if you care about 'presence' - that the person is online and can chat, usually to answer short questions. Text messages are the same but you cannot really put links to online resources in them (that are easily used) and are person to person only. Phone calls require the person to stop what they are doing and thinking to talk to you, and of course you cannot share a link to online data.

What if I want to share a small amount of information that is time sensitive (recency matters) and I want to shout it out to anyone in my circle that cares to listen. I could email, but it just drowns into the inbox and gets lost in the sea of much longer data in my inbox.

Twitter solves this need. Twitter lets you post short bits of information - including links - that are consumed by the folks 'following' you. Those folks might include your friends and family and if you so choose might include a pile of other folks too. I have my profile set to not protect my updates, so everything I post (that's not a direct message to someone) is on the public timeline of posts. It's out there, available to anyone following me, and to anyone following the grand flow of Twitter data on the public timeline.

The magic of Twitter - and of the family of new applications that will be like Twitter - is that software can 'follow' these 'tweets' (posts) and do keyword searches. I tweeted about a wine that we were going to share at dinner at a friend's house and several wine enthusiasts (and a few wine sellers) automatically started following me. A few replied with some information they thought I might find valuable. I had indicated one of my preferences, desires, and interests. And the twittersphere responded, automatically.

The future of Twitter-like applications is not about tweets like "I'm going to coffee now" but are rather going to be like "what's the best head phones for under $25?" - and data streams will reply to you. And systems will start to know you based on what you tweet about. And information that is relevant to you will become available to you without you having to go search it out. You will automatically become part of virtual communities that ebb and flow based on real-time *and* historical data flows.

Likewise, ideas like TwitterData are going to enable computer systems to more easily participate in this flow of data. I can foresee things like your car tweeting to you that it's getting low on fuel or that it's time for an oil change... or your house tweeting you that the temperature is getting really hot and it's near the time you usually leave for home and would you like to turn on the air conditioner? Twitter is an extremely low-bandwidth means for simple message communication across a common fabric - a fabric that can be used to provide an *ecosystem* to help pay for that fabric.

What do I mean? I mean that nothing is free. Someone has to pay for a service that connects all these parts, that enables all this kind of virtual community and communications and status updates. If we had to pay for it as a monthly service fee, we probably would not do so. But the ecosystem of Twitter can cover the costs because there is commerce available. I don't want to be bombarded with ads for things I don't care about (funny, since I'm in the advertising business). But I do want to hear about products and services that I do care about. If there's a great deal on a good bottle of Amarone, I would like to know about that. If my car needs an oil change I'd like to know if some local shops have a great deal on a change and some spiffy new synthetic oil. If my car tells me that it needs oil and three local shops tweet me that they want my business and offer me a deal, that's advertising I want.

These ideas are simplistic and are not indicative of the limit of what Twitter-like services can do. We've not imagined what we can do with this kind of data fabric yet. That's what makes it so exciting to me. I get the same tingle I got the first time I realized that the Internet was ideal for moving voice data to make phone calls, and the first time I realized that you really could do great video over an IP network. Only this tingle is bigger.

Twitter matters. In a year it may or may not be the dominant near-real-time internet messaging application. But it's set the stage for a whole new kind of collaboration and entire new sets of applications and services. And I'm excited to be in on the beginnings of it.

Oh, and if you want to follow me on Twitter I'm gherlein. See you in the Twittersphere!



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