Ask Not What Twitter Can Do For You
20 Dec 2007 in Twitter, cullect by GarrickAfter playing around with Twitter for nearly a year, I’ve come to an understanding with it.
The less Twitter does, the better.
In reviewing Jeremiah Owyang’s Twitter Wish List, I only agree with #2, a white-labeled Twitter for workgroup/company use. If Twitter doesn’t want that market, that’s cool. I know of at least 1 company that does.
The rest feel like they’ll turn Twitter into something it isn’t;
- Supporting non-private groups is an easy hack - create a ‘fake user’, have everyone in the group direct messages via the ‘@’. (Twitter isn’t Jaiku)
- ‘filtering’ for ‘fake users’. What does that even mean? (Twitter isn’t YFly)
- Weather? - my tweople are great at giving the weather and traffic conditions already. They’re also great at pointing me to stuff to buy, things to do, and places to go. All without a formal structure for doing so. (Twitter isn’t Facebook)
- Threaded replies implies rigidly staying on topic. Something that isn’t guaranteed in the messaging systems that have threading today (Twitter isn’t email or forums)
I’m a little surprised not to see ‘remove 140 character limit’ on the list. :p
My Twitter Wish list:
- Improved stability and API.
- Block search bots (Google, etc) from indexing.
- Become invisible.
In addition to that, there’s plenty of work to be done that keeps Twitter.
For example, I wanted a Twitter client that auto-expanded shortened urls and did something smart with the resulting file, so I baked it into Cullect.com.
Here’s an example:
