Well, I didn't think that the FT would be the first publication to write about Twitter as a cover story. But here it is in all its glory. The Financial Times' cover story on Twitter.
Mini-blog has Silicon Valley all of a Twitter
By Richard Waters and Chris Nuttall in San Francisco
Published: March 26 2007 03:00 | Last updated: March 26 2007 03:00
Silicon Valley is abuzz over a mini-blogging service for mobile phones that some predict will be a mass-market hit with the reach of a YouTube or MySpace.
Over the past two weeks, Twitter has attracted the sort of hyperbole the Valley reserves for its next internet darling - though such self-reinforcing adulationalso led to dotcom mania.
Jonathan Schwartz, chief executive of Sun Microsystems, singled Twitter out at the end of last week as the latest hit from the post-YouTube generation of "viral" applications that have the potential to attract massive online audiences.
The internet has "become so consumerised that social phenomena can take off like lightning", he said.
Warning against the temptation to reject Twitter as a flash in the pan, Mr Schwartz added: "YouTube was funny until it was worth $1.65bn (£840m) to someone," a reference to Google's purchase of the company last year.
"This is the first application that people have got excited about since Flickr came out," said Ross Mayfield, a Valley entrepreneur, comparing it with a popular photo-sharing site bought by Yahoo in 2005.
"I don't think it will be the next YouTube - but I do thinkit will gain wide adoption," he said.
Users of Twitter post short messages - up to 140 characters - that can be viewed either on a website or on mobile phones. "Twitter probably wouldn't have existed before blogging, when people learned to be more transparent," Mr Mayfield added.
Though launched publicly last summer, use of Twitter started to take off in the middle of March after it was adopted by tech-nology bloggers attending the South by Southwest conference in Texas.
As people such as Mr Mayfield lauded the service on their blogs, interest spread quickly among opinion-formers in Silicon Valley.
Hi Drew,
I actually thought of you when I saw this from The Times Online on Friday.
Forget Twitter. It's time to Jittrr!
Social networks are fine, but they don't give me the speed and immediacy I need. I want something faster. I need it now. I want Jittrr.
By Michael Parsons
By now your family and your friends and the people who you went to school with and all the people that you have ever met in your entire life have Flickr, MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, Orkut, Plaxo, YouTube, and Second Life accounts, so you'd think you had enough ways to announce your digital presence to the people who care about you. Then along comes Twitter and you realise that actually there's been something missing all along.
Until now there's been no good way to discover what the people you care about are doing at interesting moments through out the day? Sign up for Twitter, provide your cell phone details and instant message account information, and voila – you send and receive updates throughout the day. "Writing column on deadline on Friday morning for Times Online." That sort of thing. "Paddling hard to stay on top of new digital trends." Get the idea? No message is longer than 140 characters, which keeps it all fresh and immediate. It's called nanoblogging. It's going to be huge. Get used to it.
Twitter is fine as far as it goes. It has the elegance of its simple mission statement, trying to answer one simple question: "What am I doing right now?" Sure, there are teething troubles – it's getting a lot of buzz and so the service is often horribly slow, which of course undercuts the value of what is supposed to be a rapid-fire, real-time communications system. And like most networks, it only really starts to have value when the people you care about are using it: that first telephone wasn't much good on its own. However, the real weakness in Twitter is that it doesn't push its premise to a logical conclusion - it's half-baked. We need something more ambitious.
So I have approached a group of outstanding angels and experienced European venture capitalists to get some seed capital for a new idea, called Jittrr (pronounced "Jitter".) With Jittrr, you simply log in to create a free account (hurry now or you'll lose your favourite handle – and if you can't be "web2oh2000" on everything, it's just no fun, right?). Then you enter in details of all your other digital accounts, as well as your IM and phone details. After a few days your custom lifeblogging webcam, GPS locator, and microphone rig will arrive (I'm thinking of calling it The JittrrBug. Sweet, eh?) We'll provide all the tools you need – titanium screw plate, hypoallergenic gold screws, high-speed drill, local anaesthetic – and in a few minutes you can attach the Jittrrbug to the top of your head. Turn on the atomic battery and you're ready to Jittrr!
After that, everything you see will be automatically uploaded to Flickr and MySpace and Blogger. Your movements will be relayed to your avatar in Second Life. Your world will be streamed on to YouTube in brief five minute video nippets. A team of out-of-work graduates from the University of East Anglia's creative writing course, based in India, will study your digital day, reading your e-mail and listening to your text messages and phone calls, and they’ll write glittering aperçus about the human condition based on it, as well as devastating, insightful portraits of your friends, family and colleagues. And if you upgrade to Jittrr Premium Edition, a Jittrr Ninja dressed in an unobtrusive special forces neoprene black camouflage suit will follow you around at all times with an industrial strength megaphone and announce at unbelievably high volume to everyone around you WHAT YOU ARE DOING AT ALL TIMES IN EVERY SITUATION FOR EVERY SECOND OF EVERY DAY FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE UNTIL YOU DIE. Get the idea? I call it gigablogging. It's going to be huge.
If you're interested in learning more about the evolution of Jittrr.com and my plans for other innovative new digital services, please send me your banking details and other pertinent personal financial information, with credit card details, account numbers, passwords and international money orders. Trained criminals will be standing by to steal your attention, your silence, and your life.
Posted by: Alex Pullin | March 26, 2007 at 01:45 PM