I came across the following article just now, in which Twitter founder Biz Stone hinted at the company’s plans to generate some Benjamins in 2010 and beyond. Apparently they’re not in much of rush to do so.

Wired Article: Twitter To Make Money In 2010 With ‘Non-Traditional’ Ads: Biz Stone

Stone stressed the company mantra was that it was in no hurry to come up with a business plan, and needn’t be.

“There are no dates when we need to break even. We have plenty of money in the bank,”

Ok, I get this. You need a plan before you can go out and start generating revenue. But the general tone seems to indicate that while they’re doing all of this planning, the rest of the world is going to sit around and wait for them. I know that there aren’t that many direct competitors with the big T, especially those that have as deep pockets. I just don’t know if this seemingly laissez-faire attitude is the right way to go though. It doesn’t take long for the lions to realize there’s slow moving prey on the savannah.

Granted, Twitter’s recently acquired another 100 million dollars in funding without breaking a sweat. That beats my recent efforts by… about 100 million (you know, give or take). I’m definitely going to be keeping an eye open to see what their “non-traditional” advertising model is all about. Personally, I’d like to see something along the lines of flyers being dropped from giant neon zeppelins shaped like blue, fire-breathing Twitterbirds.

Just a few quick thoughts about URL shortening services, like the explosively popular Bit.ly, and it’s lesser known rivals Ow.ly, TinyURL and others.

They’ve become the standard mechanism by which people share links via microblogs like Twitter, and they’re even being adopted on forums, and other social networking sites.

As fantastic as they are for compressing unwieldy links that can end up being hundreds of characters of long (think driving directions from Google Maps), they can also be somewhat dangerous. See, I used to be (and still am) one of those people that would visually inspect a link and try to deduce whether or not I’d be clicking through to something interesting, or if I’d be greeted with flashing neon backgrounds and promises of “sexy singles in my area.” This is actually quite helpful in avoiding links that are most often, inadvertently sent through instant messages or email, by users that have fallen victim to a worm or a virus of some sort.

But with a nice, neat, short URL, there’s no way to tell the difference between the benign and malevolent. I realize that some of the bigger players are offering up ways to preview the contents of the URL beforehand (see TweetDeck’s preview URL function as an example of this.), but this does little to deter the average user from blindly clicking on a link from someone that’s considered a “trusted” source.

I see a lot of room here for 3rd party developers to hook into URL shorteners to expand preview functionality in order to minimize the clickthroughs for these virtual wolves in sheep’s clothing. Perhaps making more use of alt-tags to display long URLs, or color-coding the short URL in such case that it’s been reported as malicious/dead. Those of us in the digital space have spent years being indoctrinated against the use of “mystery meat” navigation. Links (image or otherwise) should be clear enough so as to eliminate, or at least minimize ambiguity for the user. URL shortening in its present incarnation just seems like a step away from that.

I’m going to put the content from this post (God help me, I was *this* close to calling it a ‘tweet’) into two separate buckets: One to describe the differences between my initial and present perceptions of this 800-pound social media pachyderm, and one to describe what’s remained largely the same.

Where I went wrong:

Prior to it’s explosion in 2008-2009, Twitter had been around quietly adopting a modest userbase since about 2006, playing off of the same basic model as other microblogging platforms like Pownce, Identi.ca and others. Outside of the blogosphere though (yes, that was me you heard sighing at another term I despise using), virtually nothing was known about it. When I first started looking into the service, my guess was that the VAST majority of users would be essentially be of the “fast-food” variety. Get in fast, get a quick bite, get that heavy, bloated feeling as you wonder why you’re there in the first place, and then get out.

I also assumed that commercial entities/businesses would fail to see value in it, based on the fact that the business world is just NOW starting to understand the benefits of social tools. Further, I assumed the celebrosphere (… give me that one at least? They’ve done a LOT worse.) would embrace Twitter for as long as takes FOX to cancel a series, and be done with it.

Well,… not so much. Though current numbers suggest that there are crests and troughs with regards to who uses Twitter and for how long, there are FAR many more persistent users than I thought there would be (to be conservative) figure 1 million people broadcasting their lives in little micro-bursts over the course of the last year).

Amongst the masses is an unexpected group of users; the same businesses that I thought would have turned a blind eye to this thing. Sony Pictures, Time Magazine, the Discovery Channel, the Beeb… the list goes on. Mind you, there are a few that I totally expected to be there from the start (Explore Music and iTunes Trailers being among them).

As far as celebrity involvement that pushes beyond the boundaries of toy-dog updates and upcoming project promos? They’re there as well, and the list extends beyond the usual suspects. People like ICE-T (yes that ICE-T) broadcast daily images, quotes, and fields questions in between filming on set. “DJ” John Larroquette is among the many people posting their latest musical selections using Last.fm’s popular service. Drew Carey recently offered to donate $1 for every follower he obtained (up to 1,000,000) to the Live Strong Foundation. I can’t be the only one who finds that even slightly innovative.

Where I was right:

Even given a level of interaction and involvement amongst the Twitter community that is MUCH deeper than I anticipated, the overall environment is still dominated by spectators and transient users. Amongst my own very meager following, I’ve had people post once or twice and then go dead silent ever since. This is expected though, regardless of the technology or service that you look at (How many people out there have a blog with less than 3 posts?). However, I think this will change once a much tighter integration between mobile services and handsets is introduced. Twitter has to be part of every mobile device out there, by default, full stop. Further, proper data plans and pricing need to be there to support it (especially in Canada.)

A significant percentage of accounts out there are spambots (especially porn related spam bots). That’s just reality. Where technology evolves, porn will follow. Like it or not, the adult industry is a leader in technology development and innovation, and their balance sheets will indicate nothing less. There are a few tools and services out there that attempt to minimize the intrusion (no pun intended), but by and large it’s best to just click and unfollow these sexy, language challenged sirens when they come knocking.

Lastly, the following remains true about Twitter: For every person out there that “gets” it, I can guarantee you that there are probably 5 more that don’t. I’m gradually making my way over to the “get it” camp, but I’d still need to see exactly where this company is going in the next 12 months before the lightbulb goes to go off in my head. Is there a business model, or is it all about building a userbase? Does it maintain its residence as a “site”, or does it truly make its home on mobiles? How will commercial interests be accommodated?

As far as I’m concerned, this is still very much a “wait and see” game.

It’s Christmas morning, and you’re 5 years old. You rush downstairs before everyone else and start tearing into that one gift that’s been teasing you with its shiny wrapping and big red bow for what seems like forever. Shreds of paper begin to rain down as your eyes widen at the sight of… a brand new chemistry set.

That’s pretty much how I felt about Google Wave when I first looked received my invite. It could be awesome… later, once I actually figure out what to do with it. But because it’s in limited beta right now, there aren’t really enough people that I can interact with in order to take advantage of all of its features. … Ok, a chemistry set isn’t really a social device, but you get my drift.

Don’t get me wrong. I “get” why it’s awesome. I just haven’t been able to experience it for myself. Depending on how long it’s in beta (which is likely to be quite some time, given their track record with their other products) I suppose the userbase will grow, and soon we’ll all be engaged in really rich conversations about the most recent episode of House, or how much I loathe green peppers or something.

That’s one of the things that amuses me about the mass audience (myself included). We seem to crave really cool, ever advancing technology to perform the simplest of tasks. The vast assortment of new applications dedicated to interesting ways to churn out 140 character posts on Twitter is proof of this. What do any of these apps do that’s really THAT much different from sending a text message to one or more people? Further, given that there IS a difference, how many of us take full advantage of even the most basic features? Given the iconic nature of the image below, I’m willing to bet it isn’t many.

If you’ve seen any of the trailer videos for Google Wave, they make a pretty good case for how it could be used in the course of daily events. A near seamless blending of email/IM/texting etc., making the sharing of information that much easier. But given the ever present challenge of convincing people to change their online habits (IE is still the leading web browser, despite Firefox/Chrome/Safari being better products in my opinion), I’m a little apprehensive about how fast this will take place. This isn’t merely a new tool, it’s a new toolset that’s going to require people to change the way they think about how they communicate.

I guess, as with most things, we shall wait and see. If anyone else out there has access to Wave and wants to give it a spin, drop me a line at my Gmail account (Chris DOT Baboolal).

[I apologize to any Bjork fan who reads the title of this post and now has that song stuck in their heads. ]

It’s no secret that I’m fairly liberal when it comes to my views on online privacy, so long as a few important caveats are considered. Be conscious of what you post online and where you post it. Where possible, make sure that you have a copy of all information you post online. Resign yourself to the fact that once you post something online, it is PERMANENT, and chances are slim that it will ever really disappear. Falls into the realm of common sense when you think about it, but it’s usually the case that we start freaking out whenever we’ve posted something online and one of those tenets have been ignored.

This isn’t me by the way… I swear

So that being said, I was wondering, where do you draw the line, when it comes to protecting your privacy online? How far do you go to make sure that photo of you doing the Elaine Benes at last year’s office Xmas party doesn’t spread further than desired? Think about this. You’re at said party and you’ve had a drink or two, and you start to bust a move on the dance floor. There are a couple dozen people around, and there’s a good chance that most of them have a cellphone that can snap a sub-par image of you kickin’ those heels at awkward angles. There’s also a good chance that some of those cellphone shutterbugs have access to a Facebook/Twitter/Blog account of some sort. Further, with almost frightening ease, that same image can be online and available to hundreds of thousands of people before you’ve had a chance to stumble off the dance floor.

Realistically speaking, unless you’ve instilled the fear of God in all of those around you, there’s actually nothing you can do to prevent your submission to become the next iconic YouTube star. Now sure, should you become aware of embarrassing content, you can always go through the process of trying to have it removed from the internet. That’s always worked in the past, right?

This makes me think about the intense amount of effort that’s going into making behemoths like Google and Facebook try to conform to privacy legislation. Presumably the point of such legislation is to ensure that when you sign up for services provided by the Goog et al, that you are explicitly made aware of what information you’re providing and how it could be used in the future (which, as you’ll recall is related to one of the caveats that I listed above).

Even if this is accomplished, it does nothing significant to allay peoples’ actual fear of unwanted information being released/exposed to other people. The reason for this remains the same; people post information online without full realizing what they’re doing, for whatever reason. A recent by-product of this type of behaviour is the “Texts From Last Night” (TFLN) website (link), a site which allows anyone to submit text messages that they’ve received, to be broadcast to the world. Names and other personally identifying information are usually unattached, but it’s an example of how the onus should always be on the user to monitor and control the information that they make available to others, and to accept (or at the very least be aware of the consequences of doing so).

And yet, we still give our credit cards to complete strangers and watch them disappear from sight when we purchase things offline.

As I fell asleep last night, a thought began to coalesce which accurately summed up what I’ve learned so far from being on Twitter. About a half hour later I woke up in a daze and wrote down that thought, hoping to expand on it at some point today. Of course, when I looked at that note this morning it was apparent that my moment of clarity was anything but (hence the title of today’s post – 2 points to anyone who gets the reference):

Fortunately, with a little caffeine and some online radio tunes, I’m able to recover some of the highlights. The early-adopt / early-abandon method was definitely taken by a LOT of people, as evidenced by several accounts that only 1 or 2 posts in the first couple of days since joining. There’s a strong, active community of people (celebs and non-celebs alike) that post no less than a half a dozen random thoughts per day. And then there are some that post one or two well-crafted thoughts with attached links whenever the mood strikes. Of course, there’s a healthy number of hybrid Twitterers (Tweeters? – forgive me, I still haven’t really absorbed the clique-lingo) that fill out the scatterplot as well, of which I consider myself to be one of.

From what I gather, people haven’t come to a consensus about exactly WHAT Twitter is. To some it’s a blog, to others it’s a megaphone, and still yet to others it’s like some sort of lasso, used to corral the random thoughts of others for later processing. As I posted some time ago, it’s not unique, but I suppose all that matters is that it’s still standing.

Some other random highlights:

Brent Spiner – Still amusing, still weird, still strangely compelling to read.
Alan Cross – Yet another channel to follow one of radio’s most knowledgeable and entertaining personalities.
@EverySpam/PornBot that has ever added me to their list – Perpetual proof that there will always be a mechanism out there to add noise to balance out the signal.

I’ll keep this (kinda) short, because I expect that among the people reading this, there will be some who know me, and some who don’t. Of course, that expectation presupposes that a lot of you actually read this blog. Hah. We’ll see I guess. Oh, and for those of you that don’t know me, don’t get scared off by the title of this blog. I’m not trying to sell you anything.

I signed up for Twitter a few years ago when a friend (@joanna) introduced me to it. I hadn’t used it since. I’ve posted quite a bit about it in the past, but I’ve never actually used it.

As time went by, I heard about more and more people hopping on, but I never took to it. I just didn’t get it. In fact, I still don’t. As far as the communication angle is concerned, I’m already waist deep in instant messengers, websites, message boards, text messages and a cellphone. So why am I here/there then?

Well, I’ve noticed that like with many mechanisms of communication, people use Twitter in very different ways. Some people are letting the world know about their breakfasts, some are self-promoting, some are staying in relatively close circles of communication, and some people are actually engaging in conversations with, well, just about everyone. This is something I didn’t expect, and in retrospect it should have been obvious.

One look at the list of people that I’m following, and your next question is probably…”WTF?” Well, there’s no semblance of order there, really. In addition to the few people that I know, I just started going through the lists of people that were following others, and adding names that I recognized. I will admit that I was rather surprised when I was notified via email that “Richard Moll is following you on Twitter!” Now, this is likely due to the fact that some people return the favour of a follow-action in order to expand their own networks. But hey, I thought it was kinda neat regardless. Thanks Richard!

So I guess I’m here to [attempt to] join the conversation. I’ll be blogging (here) about some of the things that I really can’t cram into 140-characters, but I’ll also be in and amongst some of you, trying to be somewhat entertaining, but mainly trying to figure this whole Twitter thing out.

Cheers!

Here are some quick points to ponder that have me wondering about… well, just about everything.

1) According to Nielsen, The Weather Network was the 4th most accessed site (in Canada) on mobile phones in Q1/2009. They beat out Yahoo Mail, Gmail, iTunes, Google Maps, MSN Games, and YouTube. Windows LiveMail, Google Search and Facebook took the top 3 spots.

Think about this. 674,000 people were in a position where they needed to access information that is questionably accurate at the best of times. Further, it’s winter in Canada (Q1 2009). You do not need a network of trained meteorologists to tell you that it’s going to be COLD.

2) I’ve decided to use the Twitter account that I had abandoned 3 seconds after signing up for it upon its birth, to actually, genuinely see what the fuss is all about. I don’t know if I plan on updating it. I want to see if I can establish a really ecclectic list of people to follow for starters. My first reaction? Following Brent Spiner is equal parts amazing, creepy, and disturbingly addictive. I’d definitely suggest checking out his feed.

“ALARM! ALARM! Someone has breached the security system! “Ernst, Ernst, to me! (learned that from Picard) STAT! (learned that from ER)”

3) The same could be said about any specialized industry, but I’ve always found the task of describing what I do to be a difficult task, especially when the person asking isn’t in the industry (specifically if said person is older and happens to be in my family). I usually start off explaining a particular project, stepping back to mention that it’s in the Digital Marketing space, stepping back once more to mention that it’s just marketing with a particular technology spin to it, and finally I resort to grunting “I do computers.” This is usually met with a lightbulb reaction and a remark similar to “Ah yes. My friend/your cousin Jane is a programmer too!” It’s usually at that point that my soul dies a little and I start fantasizing about violently dramatic ways to escape the conversation and/or the room.

I noticed that TechCrunch picked up a story today about how FriendFeed launched it’s real-time search feature. Now, you can get search results based on constant stream of incoming data from various FriendFeed blogs.

I’m wrestling with just how useful this feature is. Given Twitter’s recent spot in the limelight, just about all of the other big names in technology have been adopting Twitter-like behaviour in order to stay relevant. So is this in fact like Twitter? Twitter’s main function is to serve out real-time updates. FriendFeed is all about aggregating social network information, so there’s potentially some overlap there.

BUT,… there’s still this question of usefulness. Nearly every successful search paradigm starts with envisioning a use case. “What’s the user trying to do, and how can we make that thing easier for them?” That’s where this whole real-time search results thing kinda falls flat on its face, as far as I can see it. I tried to noodle some scenarios that have a heavy search flavour to them, hopped over to FriendFeed, to see what happens. (http://blog.friendfeed.com/2009/07/real-time-search-we-have-it-its-here.html) These are the questions that I attempted to find answers for:

1) What kind of pizza is there around Toronto? (It’d be interesting to see what ‘Za joints people are talking about, no?)
2) How was Transformers 2?
3) What’s this whole thing about the Mythbusters and a Twitter account?

Now, the results are impossible to replicate (*ahem… real-time results and all*), but here’s what I discovered.

1) For the pizza scenario, on the first page of results, there was a small note about Pizza Libretto, and numerous other posts that contained the words “pizza” and “Toronto” without any real… relevance. Still searching for ‘Za.

2) A plethora of links to various Transformers 2 F.A.Q.s hosted on other sites, and a healthy smattering of “Transformers 2 sucks balls” comments. Alright, that was moderately helpful, but it doesn’t take much to get me to avoid the movie theatre these days.

3) The first time I entered “Mythbusters” and “Twitter”, I got jack. I got a few posts that had references to one or the other, but nothing that gave me any real answers. Then I figured I might do the same search over again. THIS time I got 5 posts in a row that all explained the issue.

The thing is, if I want to “search” for something, I’m not prone to sticking my head amongst a group of people so I listen for certain words, which is exactly what FF’s real time search attempts to do. It is sometimes interesting to see what people are chattering on about, and you can accomplish this quite well just by letting the stream update itself as new posts come in. But in that case you’re not really searching for anything, so much as you’re merely people-watching.

As far as the Digital space goes, a mountain of information has been absorbed into the collective consciousness of the world in the last couple of weeks. So much so that it’s hard to measure or even comment on exactly what it means.

The Chinese government hobbles Google, Twitter becomes the de facto source of connection for the Iranian election conflict, Bing says hello world, the Palm Pre makes a surprisingly impressive entry into the marketplace, and the web itself felt the strain of half a dozen celebrity deaths.

With each of these events comes the maelstrom of online commentary, as people attempt to reflect and organize the information into digestable units. But in recent weeks it seems that there hasn’t been enough time to consume one event before another explodes onto the scene.

How do you think this affects our overall ability to communicate about events that occur all around us? Do these things go into a queue for future processing? Do some things get filtered out? Is it possible to process them all in parallel? All of the above?