Notes from a wireframe world

Twitter, the “Micro-blogging” service, has apparently gone “mainstream”. Everyone from Steven Fry to Barack Obama has a twitter account, even I have one.

But what is Twitter for? Just as with every other new tool, twitter has become more then it started out being. Initially twitter was a “Micro-Blogging” platform, a way of blogging your thoughts via SMS or on-line, in just 140 characters.

However, it has become more than that, with the inclusion of human beings, twitter has gained a life of it’s own, it has grown from just a way of telling the world your thoughts to a place too, a place you can listen in on the day-to-day lives of people you admire, and want to be associated with, such as Ryan Carson of Carsonified or Paul Boag of Headscape.

Because twitter allows you not only to view the “Micro-Blogs” of your friends, but also Search for words used within throes posts. Twitter has also become a source of news for the world, when terrorists attacked Mumbai and when flight 1549 crashed landed in the Hudson River, it was postings on twitter that provided on the spot reports to the world, including the more traditional media.

This media attention, and a direct line to some of the worlds movers and shakers, has of course made twitter, to some people, just another marketing tool, and it can work well as such, however, just as with any such tool, if you just view the people reading your posts as another notch in your bed post, and twitter as a quick, cheap and easy way of making a fast buck, your followers (throes who have chosen to subscribe to your posts) will pick up on that and leave. Successful use of twitter as a way to reach people involves you being part of the conversation, and not just pushing your views or product to any one and everyone.

Some, of course, think nothing of using twitter as a SPAM agent, getting robots to set up fake twitter accounts to push their “products” via twitter. Luckily twitter is on to them and will close down accounts that get blocked a lot or who follow people too quickly.

So what is twitter? Well it is, like most things, what you make it. If you want it as a marketing tool, it can be a powerful one, if you want to just chat to like minded people it’s very good for that as well. If you find yourself wanting live reports for major world events (or technology conferences) twitter can supply them, and of course if you want you can also just use it as a “micro-blogging” platform.

Just don’t use it to spam people!