Social Software Explored

When I think about what Twitter has done (and continues to do) I can’t help but think about XML and what being "Standards Based" means to the evolution of our human (and non-human) communication.  What XML has done for the Web I am in no doubt convinced Twitter (or something similar) will do for communication.

Another way to look at it is to think about SMTP.  It is just a protocol.  When I was in college we could plug-in to our VAX system and send e-mail to other people in the world.  That quickly evolved to desktop clients like Netscape 2 and Eudora (I know that there were many others).  Eventually, we saw a growth in servers that could handle millions of E-mails a day and what we are left with now is essentially Free E-mail for everyone (thanks Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and the like).  All on top of an agreed upon framework – SMTP.

Twitter is a framework.  Twitter is not: IMing, Texting, Friending, Linking, Time wasting.. its a framework. And frameworks let us build bigger and better things easier.

The beauty of Twitters the framework is quite simple:

1.) All messages are routed through a single server, or in this case a cloud of servers.

2.) Discovering, connecting and communicating with individual people is stone simple.

Conversations are open

Since everything goes through a single point of entry and there are ample API’s you get an amazing effect.  Take a look at Monitter.  Type in any three words and you get a glimpse of every conversation in the recent past and present where those words exist.  What is amazing here is that you don’t have to know any of them.  You hear conversations going on around the world.  The US government paid millions (maybe billions) for a similar service – it was called Carnivore.  Twitter enabled this for far less and in far less time.

Framework is key to growth

Twitter started out as a simple website where you could go and communicate.  It really wouldn’t have grown to where it is now without a strong API.  In a short time (about a year and a half) hundreds of desktop and mobile applications sprung up.  Allowing you to post, read and connect on Twitter.  You can equate this growth with the same growth of e-mail after Netscape 2 launched.  Not surprisingly, most people didn’t do to well interfacing with green screens and the desktop interface that Netscape 2 provided allowed more people to send e-mail easily.

We see the same thing happening now with applications like Digsby, TweetDeck, Twirl, iTweet (and many, many more).  Without these applications – Twitters proliferation into the mainstream would not be possible.  Look at it this way.  If Twitter were to try and develop a single interface into Twitter that satisfied every user – they would go broke.  They would need 100′s of developers and it would take forever to release new versions.  Undoubtedly, they would never provide just the right interface.

With a published API Twitter does what they do best – manage Twitter and provide framework enhancements (in the form of API’s and services).  With those API’s developers can develop many different applications that allow people to communicate on the Twitter network.  Each application slightly different then next.  Each providing a unique experience which is capable of capturing many different users’ desires.  So in effect what Twitter gets is an army of developers guaranteeing that Twitter stays alive.  Without Twitter and its framework – TweetDeck dies.

Where is this going?

What we are seeing now is that intelligent entrepreneurs are beginning to extend the framework of Twitter to offer services on top that were not part of the initial Twitter framework.  Take TwitPic for example.  Twitter is only a text based system – there was no thought in the design (or at least in the first iteration of the service) for external document support.  However, since Twitter has published an API websites like TwitPic can piggy back on top of the service and provide easy integration between Twitter and a Photo hosting solution.

No one really knows what is going to happen with Twitter but if you think about some of its quintessential qualitie s it is nothing more than a protocol. An open conversation protocol which will be stretched beyond its limit someday – just like e-mail is today.  The defining moment in Twitters place in history will be when applications available to the mainstream public offer services on top of the framework and the users of consumers of the services are ignorant to the fact that Twitter is the underlying architecture.  Much like most mainstream people today couldn’t even tell you what SMTP is or what it stands for or that they should curse it.

And I doubt anyone made any money from the development of SMTP.

A recent article was published by a very famous (and well liked) blogging network yesterday that really irked me in a way that is requiring more of my effort.  I guess it is a good thing and ultimately I am quite happy that they posted this article because it has fueled a thought I have had for sometime:

I am sick and tired of “non-targeted” advertising

I don’t really care if all of the product and marketing directors know everything about what I buy and read on the Internet.  Truly I do not.  I have nothing to hide and I would release my data under full disclosure if the following qualifications were met:

1.) No one comes up to me on the street and says to me “Hey wanna buy a new mic stand for RockBand” (I like playing RockBand)

2.) I don’t get a flood of e-mails from marketing departments asking me if I would like to test drive the new VW CC (I own a VW Passat)

3.) My information about me is not connected to me in any meaningful way (e.g. I don’t want marketing people to know that I am really Ron West and that I live at 57 Gro…. – ooops)

See in my mind I am just a number – a thing – a buyer/seller in this consumer driven market and the data for what I buy, sell and talk about is really just data.  It may describe my habits and what I am interested in but it is not me.  I want to remain FaceBook profile #66004104.

Your Data is For Sale (sort of)

You can read the post that irks me here but let me point out a few of the important details: (Well first let me start off by giving you the all important title)

Facebook Plans to Make Money by Selling Your Data

C’mon – really do you have to put it that way.  I agree it got my attention – prompted me to read and comment – and I am now writing about it but – ok that title is genius.  But the problem lies in the text:

Starting this spring, companies will be able to selectively target Facebook’s members in order to research the appeal of new products through a polling system called Engagement Ads as demonstrated at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

…

If the Telegraph report is correct, Engagement Ads have had a massive tweak; companies will be able to pose questions to and receive feedback from selected members in real time based on user information that Facebook provides.

Ok that statement “selected members” please – that is misleading.  If we were in the court of law I would simply say “I object your honor” and he/she would say “Sustained”. Then I would ask for the statement “selectively target Facebook’s members” stricken from the record – and the judge would agree again.

Facebook is not going to give companies the ability to target Ron West or any of my friends.  Facebook is not even going to allow companies to target profile #66004104 or #40034994 or any other profile because if you log out of Facebook and you type in the following URL: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?id=660041048&ref=name you know what you get? Nothing.  A login box.  Would Facebook be stupid enough to allow Pepsi or Coca Cola or any other company in to see that data? No.  That would be just plain stupid.

What Information is For Sale?

Ok – so now for the “shocking” news (at least for some of you):

YOUR DATA IS ALREADY FOR SALE

Well at least your likes/dislikes are already being used to drive advertisements.  Take a trip around Facebook.  Look at the ads in the right hand side of the page.  Notice anything peculiar?  I do.  They are all targeted to information about me.  Especially about where I live.  “Foreclosures in Massachussets”.  One of the commenter’s on the ReadWriteWeb blog post even commented about he is targeted by his sexual preference.

Take a look at the following public information about advertising with Facebook found here:

Target your exact audience with demographic and psychographic filters about real people. The targeting page defaults to people age 18 and older in the United States, but you are encouraged to modify this to reach the most appropriate people for your ad. Be sure to reference the top of the page for an estimate of the number of people who match your criteria. For more information, check out our FAQ for definitions of each target filter.

And if you actually read your EULA agreement (you do know what the EULA agreement is right?) you will see that the data you enter is not only yours but it also belongs to Facebook.  Check out some inserts from the Privacy Policy found here:

Facebook may use information in your profile without identifying you as an individual to third parties. We do this for purposes such as aggregating how many people in a network like a band or movie and personalizing advertisements and promotions so that we can provide you Facebook. We believe this benefits you. You can know more about the world around you and, where there are advertisements, they’re more likely to be interesting to you. For example, if you put a favorite movie in your profile, we might serve you an advertisement highlighting a screening of a similar one in your town. But we don’t tell the movie company who you are.

We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services, Facebook Platform developers and other users of Facebook, to supplement your profile. Where such information is used, we generally allow you to specify in your privacy settings that you do not want this to be done or to take other actions that limit the connection of this information to your profile (e.g., removing photo tag links).

…..

We do not provide contact information to third party marketers without your permission. We share your information with third parties only in limited circumstances where we believe such sharing is 1) reasonably necessary to offer the service, 2) legally required or, 3) permitted by you.

So – why am I so fired up? One reason and one reason only – misinformation. I believe that the post by ReadWriteWeb was designed to get people fired up (it worked) and by not providing some of the facts actually misguided lesser informed people.  Isn’t this the reason we are migrating from the Media best now which is governing the mainstream?

Ok, I think this subject has been beaten to death in the past whatever months but I want to throw another idea out there that I am not sure has been thought of.

What if there was a way to Monetize clicking on links from within a Tweet?

One of the hardest thing to do is to get someone’s attention – especially on Twitter.  I only follow 50-60 active users on Twitter and get more than 20 pages of tweets everyday.  I don’t read all of them – can’t.  It would take forever.  On Twitter you are forced to be clever or in a sense “market” their tweets in order to get someone to even read it.  And this is coming from someone with 50-60 active users – what about those people with hundreds if not thousands…

Here are 3 links that appeared in my stream today which exemplify what I am talking about:

@blakespot: Change. That’s what’s up. http://tinyurl.com/59resq about 22 hours ago from TweetDeck

@georgedearing: http://ping.fm/p/PrFjH – This is the crappy part of the trip about 4 hours ago from Ping.fm

@sfsmaus: Bugger all… http://snipr.com/4tqwo about 4 hours ago from digsby

Each of these Tweets was a promotion.  More so than posting it to their Del.icio.us accounts or to FriendFeed etc…. they posted to Twitter because it was something that they wanted to share.

In most cases (these three tweets as examples) I would have never stumbled upon (hee hee) these links and  would have never been subjected to their sites advertising.  Never.  Twitter is a crucial network for sharing information like this and if there was some way to monetize this I think it would help.

At some level most of the early adopters on Twitter – the one’s that are active – are all mavens.  Maybe not like a Blogger is but in a different way.  We are all promoting something – us and how we think and see the world.  In most cases that includes products.

I don’t know how many people I have turned on to Digsby.  I found out about Digsby on Twitter from @tonyk – else I might still be using that other crappy program – Trillian.  Goodness gracious.  So glad.

Maybe if we could track our influence similar to those silly pyramid schemes like Amway and Herbal Life – we could put a dollar sign to it.

Just a thought.

Work has already begun to do this (see the Microformats site for more) and infact if you view the source of my WordPress blog (for those posts with comments) you will see that it has already in place.

If you were to think about the Internet like a Librarian thinks about the Library you would go nuts. Not only would the amount of information out there scare you into submission, but you also have to consider the types of information.  If you went into the local library and grabbed an index card from the Microfiche catalog and placed it into the Microfilm catalog the librarian would quickly and quietly escort you to the door and ask you to not return again.

The organization of information by type is just as important as indexing content by topic.

The Conversation
We are now having conversations everywhere.  Some popular places that I have conversations are:

• Blogs
• Forums
• Twitter
• FriendFeed
• Facebook
• SocialMedian

And if you go onto FriendFeed you will see that there are millions of places to have conversations.  Yes, Millions.

Today a friend of mine posted a link on Facebook.  The article outlined how people are being misinformed by mainstream media.  The content of the link prompted a conversation between myself, the user who posted the link and one of his friends.  The new Facebook design allowed us to have this discussion inside each of our News Feed Home pages.  This was great but in about 2 days this conversation will be all but lost and no one outside of our small group will ever be able to offer their opinion or reference the conversation.

A little later on I read a post by Jeremiah Owyang on Twitter asking users to answer the following question

Debate: should the debates continue this Friday? #debatedebate

Being newer to FriendFeed than Jeremiah’s closer friends, I decided that I would reply via Twitter.  After a visit to FriendFeed (which automatically aggregates information from many Social Networking sites like Twitter, Google, Flickr, Blogs etc…) I saw that everyone responded to Jeremiah’s post there.  FriendFeed also provides an easy “comments” section for almost any type of aggregated content.

As conversations move from the traditional Blog Post, Forms and even Twitter – how can we capture that content in a useful way?

Microformats

Are Images Any Different?

If you told the 10 year ago me that I would be able to type text like “American Flag” into a search engine and find all of the images that have something to do with an American Flag, I would have told you were crazy.  In fact, I might have even asked you to quietly leave.

When you think about what an image is – at some level it is a perfect Microformat and provides all the information needed to be fully indexed by most intelligent search engines today.

I think that if we implemented a common Microformat for comments (or conversations) we could begin to track conversations on any platform and treat them like a type of content (or information).  We could then aggregate this content in special search engines.

The result would be a glimpse into the conversations going on at any given time.

In 2004 here was the status of some the now more prominent Social Media sites:

• Digg – didn’t exist (launched late 2004 December)
• Reddit – didn’t exist (started in 2005)
• Propeller.com – didn’t exist (started in 2006 by Netscape now owned by AOL)
• Slashdot – started in 1997 (this site mostly focused on technology)
• Treumers – didn’t exist
• StumbleUpon – didn’t exist
• SocialMedian – didn’t exist

(thanks for the list)

A New Information Channel

Now with the advent of Social Networking sites like Ning, a whole new era of information distribution has emerged.  A lot of the discussions that I have gotten into lately is about misinformation of the public.  Not the ignorance of the public but the flat out misinformation. In most cases some of these people that are misinformed are downright intelligent.

Take into consideration that although most of the mainstream media floats to the left, there are specific news stations (fox for example) which can also lean to the right. Other than sites like FactCheck.org, most sites are “interpretations” of the information.

The definition of a Social Media on Wikipedia (while it may differ from site to site) is

… the use of electronic and Internet tools for the purpose of sharing and discussing information and experiences with other human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences.

It is the method of interaction which offers the most interesting change here.  Although there is no guarantee that the use of Social Media will be free of biased information, it presents a single channel comprised of information from both sides of the line.  In addition, the information is presented with collaboration tools (such as comments and forums). Good community action has proven to elevate the conversation beyond one persons opinion or view.  In most cases, the post or article simply introduces an idea or a viewpoint, the conversation which occurs after allows for mediation and fact checking.

SoMe Election 08

It is sites like SoMe (Social Media) Election 08 which drive this point home.  Built on the Social Networking framework of Ning it allows users to post content about the upcoming election.  Any content.  As a member of this site (it’s free by the way) you can post:

• Photos
• Videos
• Blogs
• Discussions
• Links
• Events

You can even chat with other users who happen to visiting the site at the same time.

This particular site focuses heavily on the presence, power and effectiveness of media on the Presidential Election and accepts all viewpoints.  No one person has the power and while it is slow going right now it represents the type of change Social Media can bring.

What a site visitors gains out of this type of interaction is a more well rounded view of the issues (or information).  Not that they aren’t subjected to bias views, but since all views are expressed at once, it is easier to see both sides of the debate – which is required when making a decision.

As a part-time product manager (and a true fan of products, marketing and advertising in general) – I have to mention the phenomenon that is the “New” Facebook.  Quite frankly, I could give a crap.  Like almost any UI or system – we will adapt and the new users that come after us will not know the difference.  I have gone from Mosaic to Netscape to IE to Firefox – it’s all about change.  So who cares. 

If you are product manager – you should.

There are two main factors which make this switch for Facebook so interesting:

1.) Facebook’s delivery model is similar to that of a SaaS

2.) Facebook presents an interesting collaboration model which allows customer’s voices to be heard (sort of)

Product Management in a SaaS model

Lets take the fist portion of this – SaaS (or Software as a Service).  The “Service” that Facebook provides here is simple – communication.  We can use this platform to communicate easily with people we know and to a certain extent – don’t know.  Applications are making it easy and fun to do things like track our movie and music tastes to posting photos and videos of our latest adventures – all on the same server. 

Which means that when Facebook wants to make a change it is instantaneous – they just post the change.  In traditional software – or non SaaS models (like ours) the change is more gradual and does not effect the entire customer base.  You post a patch or a hot fix – those people affected (or brave enough to try it) download it and the change is made.  Rarely, do you hit more than 20% of your users at a time.

The “New” Facebook was available to anyone by simply adding “new” into their URL like: http://www.NEW.facebook.com.  Although, most people didn’t know this – the changes were visible immediately.  All your friends, their updates, your updates, your applications – instantaneous.  Sweet.

As a product manager of a more traditional software environment I envy the SaaS model.  Deployment on a single platform has these added benefits:

• Simple delivery model with a known platform
• Coordinated testing with pre-defined groups (e.g. these users get the new Facebook while these other users get the old)
• Instant feedback
• Soft launch
• Controlled roll-out

There are some other advantages to this type of model but I want to focus on a more important benefit that Facebook has when it comes to Product Management.  User feedback.

Like or not – you CAN NOT please everyone.  I can not repeat that enough.  However, without upgrades designed specifically to address user feedback your product can and will alienate your customer base.

If you search for the term “New Facebook” using the Facebook Search and you click on Groups you will find over 500 groups with that term in its name or description.  Dig through those results and you will find groups like these:

• People against the New Facebook System (47,294 members)
• The New Facebook Layout SUCKS! (9,188 members)
• I HATE the New Facebook (3,683 members)
• The New Facebook Sucks (2,113 members)
• I hate the new facebook – change it back! (2,588 members)
• i HATE THE NEW FACEBOOK (obviously group names are case sensitive) – (2,320 members)
• The NEW Facebook SUCKKKKSS – Change it BACKKKK (2,233 members)

Managing Customer Feedback

When your customer base becomes contributors – the results are amazing.  These groups don’t mean that new Facebook sucks especially if you compare the size of these groups against the number of facebook users as a whole – more than 60 million active users as of the beginning of 2008 (source).

[As I write this - Facebook is down - hee hee]

However, what you do have is the best collection of user feedback that a Product Manager could ever ask for – without having to lift a finger.  They didn’t have to do anything. Nothing. Nada.

Just build the new software – put it out there so people could see/use it and wait.  Surely digging through the feedback is tough.  The “People against the New Facebook System” has over 1,700 wall posts and 55 Threaded discussions.  Mixed in this garbage of useless responses and posts like “Facebook sucks” and “Bring back the old Facebook” are some truly genuine criticisms like:

Jonathan M. Cajigas wroteon Aug 12, 2008 at 10:57 PM

Since I have no idea how to program anything but an alarm clock, I’m curious if anyone in this group with programming knowledge could comment on the feasibility of writing a Gresemonkey script or Firefox Add-On that would let Firefox users keep using the old Facebook, even after the eventual switch.

Robert Heller (Springfield, MA) replied to Jo’s post on Aug 6, 2008 at 11:16 AM

9) It seems to want a wider browser window. The old facebook fit on my 800 pixel wide browser window (yes, I have a 1024×768 pixel screen and no, I *DON’T* (and won’t) maximize my windows).
10) Seems to want flash player. I don’t have flash player installed and no I *DON’T* want to install flash player — I avoid sites that depend on flash player for navigation. Flash is seriously bad news as fas as I am concerned. If flash player becomes *required* for facebook, I am likely to quit facebook.

Jennifer Hale (Uni. Southampton) wrote on Aug 11, 2008 at 12:43 AM

Since the left hand navigation bar has gone, to get anywhere you have to go back to the home page and start again. I liked the fact that I could just jump from one page to another.
I will have to go back into the new Facebook (sighs and pulls face) just to find and list all the things that are now more awkward to use.
I liked the fact that the page was narrower before. It means you never had a problem viewing the page whatever resolution screen you had. The old Facebook just seemed cleaner and tidier to use. Yes some people’s profiles were so application filled that you couldn’t find the wall to send them a message, but that is their choice. I do have a few applications, but I always ensured that most of them were closed (minimised) or below my wall so people could access it easily.

My only criticism that I can see is that Facebook hasn’t made it public that it is listening to its customers.  I am sure that they have reasons but with all of this feedback (and some of it good) it would be interesting to see some interaction with Facebook Product Managers and/or developers.

Conclusion

The new application framework models (like SaaS) present some interesting benefits for Product Management and customer relations.  Additionally, the social media aspect of Product Management today is an improvement on old style customer relations.

I was inspired by this great article in the only “paper” magazine that I subscribe to (Fast Company). The article is about the fall of AOL and how their tumble into obscurity was marred by general business mistakes which compounded with the eventual loss of the company’s largest revenue generator (dial-up).

I got a call about a month ago from my first tech employer (small ISP in Rhode Island called NetSense). The president of the company and I still remain in contact – he informed me that he was selling off his last PRI line (used to handle large amounts of dial-up customers). Lucky for him dial-up wasn’t his largest revenue generator (his hosting revenue is king).

I then started thinking about some of the other services that we use whose days may be numbered. I came up with one rather interesting service: cell phones.

As I have talked about before (here and here) communication is changing. Not only are the ways in which we communicate (Web, IM, E-mail, etc…) changing the channels in which we communicate are also changing (Blogs, Wiki’s, Facebook, Twitter etc…). I think about the ways in which I communicate with people. More and more of that communication is done digitally. I use IM and Twitter exclusively when I want to ask brief questions or touch more than one person at time.

Additionally, VOIP and software programs like Skype are making strong cases against traditional cell phones. Remember the tustle between Apple and Cisco – it was essentially over “who owned the connection”. Once cell phones started adding Wifi and services like Skype became more and more reliable – a traditional “phone number” and the services that companies like AT&T, Sprint and Verizon offer are becoming less valuable.

What I see happening is you will no longer need to “call” someone or send someone an “e-mail” you will simply say to your device (which will be tethered to the Internet) I want to communicate with Ron. Wherever I am and whatever services I have available (Skype, Twitter, IM etc…) we will be connected. I don’t see anyone needing a single number (except for the people that only have cell phones). Our children will be connected in ways we can only imagine and it won’t be with a phone number.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my cell phone and right now I use it for a lot of my communication. What the article made me think about was this:

If you are a cell phone company today (or an investor in a cell phone company) what you should be doing is learning from AOL’s mistakes and should begin planning for the day when they begin to lose subscribers. Are they going to use their channels to deliver new services so they can keep their subscribers or are people going to be sick of paying $45 for a phone and $50 for connectivity services when they would only really need the $50 service fee to have connectivity for their communication applications.

I have to agree with Robert Scoble on the fact that “I love the noise”.  I am referring to Scobleizer’s post about Noise vs. News and why sites like Google News and Techmeme don’t have any noise:

First, let’s do a little definition of the difference between news and noise. The noise examples were pulled off of Twitter in the past few minutes.

NEWS: tens of thousands dead in China quake.
NOISE: BrianGreene: some pirate is playing old radio nova tapes on 92FM dublin, with old jingles and old ads. adverts for rent a 20″ TV 48p a day (48 pence!)

NEWS: Janitors go on strike.
NOISE: flawlesswalrus: @craigmod Iron Man’s fun times. Enjoy!

NEWS: Facebook blocks Google
NOISE: dmkanter: organizing my igoogle homepage

So, how come services like Twitter and FriendFeed have so much noise? Who likes the noise? Who likes the news?

Again – like news but I love the noise.  The noise on sites like Twitter allow you to make your own news or to read “news” before it happens.  Twitter is really the only place for people to break it open. It is a completely viral process and since it is a new medium it favors those people that can not only interpret the noise but those than can control it.

I have been listening to the noise for a long time – it helped me get into the Internet (which is pretty much filtered noise).  If you could look at all of the information flowing through the Internet at anytime you would first get a wicked headache – but you would then be the smartest person alive – but only if you can handle the noise.

Let’s take a few things that I have posted to Twitter recently:

Following the Star Wars movie up with Lego Star Wars the Complete Saga on the Wii reinforces the use of the force. Training young well I am

To an untrained eye this would seem like noise – clearly – who cares what movies I am watching – there are millions of people out there watching millions of movies every day.

But to a trained eye – this information may be interesting.  Look at this information from a different angle or compare this to what may be a trend.

Take this marketing issue for instance: How do we know that the video games that follow movie stories enhance the movies storyline and improve brand recognition.  Surely if they both make a lot of money you could make an inference but you may not know for real.

If you could comb all of the conversations on Twitter where people talk about movies and video games you could prove the theory.  Additionally, you could engage those users in conversations which will help enforce your theory.

This is the noise – and this is how you read it.  Robert is right – I love this!

With all of the buzz around Twitter lately (Michael Arrington feels like Twitter will soon go mainstream - whatever that is – shortly) the conversation will obviously turn to valuation.

Twitter is currently looking for funding (with 17 people I am not sure why they need that kind of funding) to improve operations and possibly make enhancements to the product.  This brings two thoughts to mind:

1.) What improvements really need to be made (or better still where is the technology going…)

2.) Where is the money

What Improvements
When you think about improvements at this level you must separate the technology that is Twitter and the applications that allow us to use it.  Twitter is nothing more than a set of web servers, a few databases and a set of API’s.  Older data lists that twitter.com is used to post up to 60% of the tweets.  So that leaves 40% of those tweets to applications and Instant Messaging – all of which are not controlled by Twitter themselves.  These applications use the Twitter API’s to handle the posts and responses.

So, when you think about what improvements you may think about improving the website but I know in my circle of users – twitter.com is used way less than 60%.  I use occasionally and that is only from my mobile phone.  Give me something like Digsby on a mobile phone and I am all over it.

Where is the Money?
So have you noticed?  Twitter is free.  Not only that – you are not subjected to silly AdWords from Google every time you make a post.  Um yeah … sit back and chew on that for a moment.  There are not that many truly free services (of the magnitude of Twitter – 1 million users) out there.

I know that when I sit down with a VC group about my “idea” or “proof of concept” and I am looking for funding – they want to see revenue potential.  How is Twitter going to pay back all of the money that they borrow?

One school of thought would be that the Web site could serve up ads like they have done in the launch of Twitter for Japan.  I don’t have numbers to back this up – but my gut feeling is that the use of Twitter through a web site will continue to diminish and so too would the revenue stream if they were basing that on Ads.  I have read a ton on the web about the degeneration of Ad based revenue and what it means for the Web2.0 style applications.

Another avenue for Twitter would be to turn there features into a pay for service style application:

• Small usage account is free – 20 followers – 20 tweets a month
• Medium usage account costs $19.95 a year – 20 to 100 followers with 100 tweets a month
• High usage account costs $5.95 a month – unlimited followers and unlimited tweets

It would be difficult for me to justify my use of Twitter if I had to pay a monthly fee (not that I am a “High Usage” account).

So I again have to ask – what is this money really going to do and how is Twitter going to pay it back?

OK I will admit that RFC 882 did not have a true “usage” section but I can guarantee that if the folks at ARPA knew (not like they aren’t alive anymore) what we were using E-mail for we would certainly have this wonderful tool take away from us – much like a child’s toy is taken away when it is misused.  They define this as the “Standard for the format of ARPA Internet text messages”

When I was in high-school, e-mail was exclusive to higher education and governmental sections.  At the time, I took a shop class (where you learned how to build things with wood and such) and my teacher informed me that the Screwdriver was the “Most misused tool” in the tool belt.  While I would agree that I have used a screwdriver as a hammer, a chisel, a saw, a crow bar, an awl and probably nine hundred other things, I would have to say that it is no longer the “Most misused tool”.

I would like to submit my nomination for the current “Most misused tool”: E-mail

Let’s talk about the ways that I have seen E-mail used over the past few weeks:

Replacement for the “I know the answer to this but…” IM
Instant Messaging (essentially an extension of “Internet Text Messages”) is one of the fastest and most non-intrusive way of asking a question that you probably know the answer to but are too lazy to figure out for yourself.  I do it myself quite often.  However, IM offers the receiving party (the one you are interrupting for this stupid question) the option to answer your question or not.  I can’t count the number of  times I have received an e-mail – responded to it – and then realized that about 10 e-mails later, that user had already responded saying “never mind”.

Alternative to true IM message
Last Friday I responded back and forth with one of my colleagues more than 15 times in under ten minutes on three topics.  Essentially, some back and forth that would have been better suited for a quick chat via IM.  The kind of conversation that didn’t leave either of us with any “action items”.  Funny thing was, about an hour earlier, we had an IM conversation for about 10 minutes where we exchanged a ton of comments on what was going on between us and work.

Mechanism for sending large files
I know that we haven’t totally solved this problem yet and while there are a ton of options, most of them require you and the person you want to send files to an account – but there has to be a better way.  I received 20 e-mails this week with attachments – 4 of them were over 2 MB.  Ideally, I should have no issue keeping my mailbox size under 500MB but this becomes a challenge when e-mail’s are misused.  A reminder: They called “Standard for the format of ARPA Internet TEXT messages” – TEXT.

Method for sending and spreading crippling Viruses
For most of this unfortunately, this is related directly to the above, however if we were capable of keeping e-mail to simple text messages – we would not have this problem.  Virus writers would have to search for other ways to to send viruses.  2 places I won’t have to worry about getting Viruses from: Twitter and IM (it is not IM but the file sharing aspect of IM that causes problems).

I commend people that are beginning to write about this: Whipping up a batch of effective communications and Struggling to evade the E-mail Tsunami.  I can guarantee that my children will have solved this problem, not because they have to think long and hard about what an e-mail is and what it shouldn’t be, but because they will have available to them a whole new set of tools which will make the use of e-mail already either obsolete or useful for specific tasks only.

Update: 4/21/2008 – 19:21

How timely, I am now receiving 30 e-mails a day about an e-mail that I could not deliver:

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

Subject:    Эффективная система обучения и развития персонала
Sent:    4/21/2008 5:22 PM

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

mail@oxp.ru on 4/21/2008 7:10 PM
The e-mail system was unable to deliver the message, but did not report a specific reason.  Check the address and try again.  If it still fails, contact your system administrator.
< internet.referent.ru #5.0.0>

Um – yeah I must have a virus or something because I surely did not send an e-mail with the subject: Эффективная система обучения и развития персонала.  Awesome!

And – I also recieved this e-mail today (withholding senders address):

Subject: It’s too big…

Message: I will post it to the web

Oh boy I love e-mail =)