180 degrees on Twitter
I joined Twitter back in early 2008 not realizing what I was getting myself in to. I was convinced by several friends that twitter was "a good thing" and that I had to "try it to really understand it". And they were right. I really didn’t get twitter, but I have to admit that Twitter has changed my life pretty dramatically (and I recently sanctioned this on Facebook by officially becoming a ‘twitter fan’).
When I joined Twitter, they were getting over all the major bashing they took right before and after SXSW. Thankfully right about the time that I got on twitter, they were on their way to rectifying a majority of their issues. Not too long ago, you saw posts from the big guns: "Twitter fails Macworld Keynote Test (1/15/2008)" and "Twitter: Something Is Technically Wrong (5/20/2008)", "It’s Time For FriendFeed To Kill Twitter (5/23/2008)" – you just don’t hear things like that being said about Twitter anymore (aside from the recent phishing scandals). No news is indeed good news, I suppose.
One of the biggest reasons I’ve started enjoying twitter is because how I’ve been able to catch up with current events. For example, in the past couple of months I’ve caught two breaking stories on Twitter – the Mumbai terrorist attacks and the Continental flight incident in Denver through the people I follow on Twitter:
Twitter isn’t just about updating your network about your current status – it is way more than that. And the way twitter is being used is way beyond it’s original scope of wanting to answer the simple question – "what are you doing?" Twitter helps you report your life to the world. The abundance of client applications has undoubtedly helped propel the use of Twitter. Applications like Twhirl for your dekstop and TinyTwitter, Twittelator and TwitToday for mobile phones makes it extremely simple for you to tweet and keep up with you friends. Properties like Twitpic, which lets you share a picture quickly with your twitter network, have definitely pushed the boundaries and let you share more than just text. And of couse, there is Summize (now Twitter Search). Summize has to be the best twitter utility out there – hands down.
The growth of users and engagement on twitter is definitely very impressive. As of November ‘08, according to compete, the site has seen a 640.2% growth in traffic YOY. I think the collective increase in engagement on traffic has definitely been a lucrative reason for me to want to use it as well. There are people from all walks of life who are using Twitter, celebrities like Jimmy Fallon, Shaquille O’Neal, and Lance Armstrong to tech luminaries like Guy Kawasaki and Tim O’ Reilly to president (elect) Barack Obama.
We, at Microsoft, have been looking at how we can use Twitter as a marketing tool. For example, I’d noticed that events are a common ground for people to tweet from. With the recent launch of BizSpark, we were in several cities marking the launch. I wanted all the attendees at the event to twitter about ‘@bizspark’ so that those who couldn’t make it to the event could track what was happening there. The offline to online marketing idea seems to have worked, methinks:
So, I stand corrected. I’d said this back in January 2008:
"… having done my share of research on teh internets, the only thing I can conclude is that Twitter is more-or-less useless. I’d love to be wrong"
And, I was wrong.
I’m starting to push 30 – clearly a huge life milestone for me. What’s most exciting for me is to be able to look back at my tweets 5, 10, 15 years out and look back at all the ridiculous things I was thinking out loud about.
"ai"
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