Twitter

Wow, talk about dropping the ball. I signed up to Twitter about two weeks ago, after being persuaded by the promotional video (see below), as I had originally hated the idea. But I now see what all the fuss is about, first of all it fills the gaps between blogs and emails, secondly it brings you closer to celebrities and finally its a good way to get messages and stay in touch with mates!

Twitter was definitely the next big thing a few months ago, and now it seems to have seamlessly slipped into place between emails, blogs, facebook and other social network sites.
Part of the beauty of twitter is its simplicity, perhaps not behind the scenes but certainly the front end, there are few options and its a simple interface of entering text and pressing send. It took me a while to understand about following and being followed, but once you play around with it, its a brilliant way of keeping up to date with people who you may not usually talk to.

One particularly attractive feature of twitter is that you can follow people without them having to follow you (or accept you as a follower), this is unlike both facebook and myspace, with users having to confirm you as a "friend". The obvious result of which is the attraction of celebrity culture, it means that we, as mere mortals, are able to follow Jon Snow, Edith Bowman, Greg James and my personal interest Forge Media.

Two very interesting things have happened on twitter recently, one, involving Johnathan Ross. Yesterday "Wossy", as he is known on the site, was in touch with Eminem and was offered the chance to go to Detroit and attend a CD launch, he couldnt make it, and so gave it away on Twitter! It was actually pretty tense when he was twittering the question, and you knew that his 253919 followers would be keen to reply.

Twitter has been widely accepted into the social private domain, but in my opinion it potential is much larger than is realised, or rather, than is being implemented. Twitter has enormous potential for the public domain, large corporations can issues updates quickly and easily, announce new products, recall faulty ones, run competitions etc. In its simplest form, Twitter is as exciting as email was when it arrived, except Twitter is a lot less forceful and intrusive, you cannot get Spam on twitter, as you choose who you follow!