Bloggers - GET ON TWITTER NOW PLEASE! And if you use Gmail, IM, social networks or SMS, Twitter is going to get you addicted. Why didn't I get on to this before? Don't know. But I am hooked now.
Twitter is as easy to use as sending an IM or a text, and really addictive. As addictive as blogging was when you first got into it.
You'll wonder why another developer hadn't thought of integrating IM with web-publishing and SMS before. Twitter's integration of all these platforms means you're getting chats from people all over the place either on IM, texting from their mobiles, or online like bloggers.
If you're into FaceBook, MySpace, Bebo or other similar social media networks, having mobile integration will get you hooked too.
AND, as Twitter lets you use the output so you can stick it into any web page, you can insert your own and your buddies' posts and conversations into your MySpace, blog, wiki, website or whatever. Like this, or this. Or this. You can even build a flash page with your Twitters (v v v cool).
If you do all of the above, then Twitter is massively powerful.
I'm using Twitter on IM from my mobile (a BlackBerry). So I'm getting IM chat from my social network to my mobile, always-on and live. And all this is being also published online here, on SMS and via RSS too here. If you want it on email even, you can get that here. And when I chat back, it's as easy as writing an IM message, getting published to my buddies, to the web, to RSS and through SMS. Being easy as well as addictive means it's going to have a lot of users.
As for business applications, they're not hard to conceive. Travel PR Blog says: "If I was a tour operator running safaris, for example, I would get my
top tour guide to Twitter and I would carry the updates live on the web
site." Me, I'll be looking at all my clients' businesses and seeing how a system like this can help them. News monitoring teams, event support, tracking execs, offering coupons and special offers... more ideas on a postcard please.
- A few names you might recognise who are on Twitter now: The Guardian's Bobbie Johnson, PR bloggers Renaissance Chambara, Stuart Bruce, and Jeremy Pepper, evangelist Robert Scoble, ex-TechCrunch Sam Sethi, his editor Mike Butcher, author and NMK editor Ian Delaney, Yahoo and Plasticbag.org's Tom Coates to name a few.
BTW - my most up to date Twitter posts will also be in the top left of this blog. As if by magic.
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