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Twitter

Those Demanding Twitterers

Jan 27th, 2008
by Lou Paglia.
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Wow, it figures less than a week after I formally apologize to Twitter, the “cybertaurians” have come out in full force demanding 99.9% uptime, future monetization plans or else! I joined the conversation today over at Jeremiah Owyang’s blog where he asking for Twitter to take its next step towards a mature service. Shel Israel a day earlier blogged a very well-written letter to Evan Williams and Biz Stone regarding his views, that people are now talking and that Twitter must get to the next level. And this is two examples of those discussing Twitter, there are plenty.

This brings me to my point (and for the most part, most likely perceived as contrarian), where exactly is the inflection point for a service on where these consumer demands are placed on it. It isn’t because people are paying for it and demand their return on investment, Twitter is free. Shel and Jeremiah both mention the need for a disclosed monetization strategy. Why? I’m trying to think back to 1997 to remember if the public demanded similar things of Google before the nascent ad words marketplace was disclosed.

Now, to be clear, I am not taking an investor’s view here, if I was Fred Wilson and Union Square Ventures, I would want to be sure Biz and team had a plan for platform scalability and a long term monetization plan before I invested a few million. But my view is consumers do not share that same right. Can they vote with their feet and go to competing services? Of course and that is their choice.

But the bigger question is bigger than Twitter alone. As consumers, how much should we expect and demand from ‘free’ services? And what is the point in which we should expect services to take the next step in maturation, having pre-conceived notions about their evolution or even their ultimate goal as a service?

Too much social software?

Jan 17th, 2008
by Lou Paglia.
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I for one say “yes”.  They are all good and all have their use.  And even more daunting is that they each have very compelling capability sets:  WordPress is ideal for my serious blogging commentary, Twitter for quick blasts out to others (group instant messaging) and Tumblr is an easy to use micro-blogging tool where it is much easier to post quotes, video and pictures as well as random posts.

I am not a full time social software guy, I work full time.  Social software are tools I use to communicate my thoughts and collaborate with others.   And there is no way to tie them together.  Why can I not have a tool that allows me to editorially select which of my Tumbles into my WordPress blog, correlate where I have most of my serious contextual posts.  It would be great to tie them together.  My sense if I don’t find a way to merge my posting with some editorial decisions soon, I’m going to have to shut down my tumbling because I simply do not have the time to bounce around.  That would be unfortunate because the Tumblr interface does afford me an easier blogging interface than WordPress and more flexibility than Twitter.  Anyway fully move their blogging over to Tumblr completely?  Seems to be a tough proposition for those who are blogging on a particular theme on one of the standard blogging platforms.

Official Apology to Twitter

Jan 16th, 2008
by Lou Paglia.
6 comments

First, I must apologize to Twitter. Back in May, I questioned the merit of the service in my post The “Echo Chamber” Reverb. At the time I promised to reserve complete judgment until I used the service. So since that time one of two things have happened, I have fully come to understand the value of Twitter by using it everyday OR I, too, am writing this post from inside the echo chamber. I understand these are not mutually exclusive so perhaps both are true.

Anyway, I could be as bold to say that Twitter is one of the most valuable services to emerge in the last couple of years. Is it simple? Yes. But it serves a purpose. You can keep track of friends and colleagues. You can group message. You can lurk in an acceptable way (i.e. where society will not consider you a stalker). It serves as quite a serviceable micro-blogging tool and can be utilized a personal PR and promotion engine with short-URL. (See Paul Kedrosky and Jeremiah Owiyang as two examples.)

To this day, I am still finding myself trying to convince others about the value of Twitter. In most cases, those individuals have never used it or refuse to. To them, I can only suggest to give it a try. And it is not right for everyone but it is right for me. So, Twitter, I apologize.

The “Echo Chamber” Reverb

May 25th, 2007
by Lou Paglia.
10 comments

The infamous “Echo Chamber”. If you have a blog that concentrates on any topic regarding the web, you are pretty much right in the center of it. It is a term you hear a lot out of the valley. For example, Fred Wilson has 19 different blog posts where he uses the term. My personal favorite is from his post, Outside the Echo Chamber, where he describes his encounter with a typical American:

Our driver said, “why is it that Google is so much better than Yahoo when they are both owned by the same company”.

That type of comment really makes one think. It is challenging to keep perspective about the views of the web outside the “echo chamber” when we are so involved in the web, the innovation taking place around us and the great solutions. As Geoffrey Moore would classify us, we are the innovators and we are the early adopters; there are whole other classes of people AFTER the chasm.

And on that point, does the average person actually care about Twitter? Well, I can’t say that I do either, I haven’t been able to relate to the hype (Renee Blodgett is with on this) so I would welcome some enlightenment about it. But overall, we should understand how the reverb affects us, our immersion in OUR own immersion.

But then again, for every comment like the one above, I get pleasantly surprised by others. Like when my uncle who is trying to price his house said “well, I guess I’ll check out the other houses in my neighborhood on Zillow“.

Other coverage and resource on the Echo Chamber:

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