Wow a lot of twitter guys here. I wished you could
a) Import an opml file with Twitter accounts.
b) Create groups of Twitter friends you can message like @group1
If someone knows of any webapp that implements a) please let me know :D
Chris Brogan tried the group idea with "Twitter Packs"... he implemented it quickly and dirtily using a Wiki though, so editing it runs into some obvious pitfalls (e.g., contention when a page is edited by more than one person)...
Also subscribe to the RSS of your company name (or keyword of choice) at http://terraminds.com/twitter. My favorite Kirigins have Tipjoy on that badboy.
Peronally I've gotten a lot more utility out of Friendfeed so far.
Twitter is neat though -- I'm building a site that will scrape replies to a Twitter user called @rating and put them in a database of ratings. The reply just has to look like this:
@rating 5 "Thing Being Rated" Mini-review goes here.
I'll post it when the battle of Rails deployment is over.
It's description and the inane posts I originally read made me think the same thing!
But, after much use it's a great piece of technology. It allows you to survey a crowd, use it for emergency purposes (San Diego Fire Dept did just this), learn about what your friends are reading/sharing, where they are going for the evening, how they feel, etc...
I can see the reason for footnotes on a long post for meta information, but why do you use them in your little messages? Why not just explain what's in the footnote when you first mention it?
Not an attack, just a friendly question. I've noticed you do this fairly often.
I agree with [1] though; Robert Scoble is the worst offender, seconded closely by Guy Kawasaki. Bundling messages together would screw up the API and break things like twitterific, probably. I wonder if there's a better solution.
"... Why not just explain what's in the footnote when you first mention it? ..."
good point, I'll see what I can do.
"... I wonder if there's a better solution. ..."
friendfeed does the obvious thing that is it restricts view to the latest 3 by person so as to not clutter the page. Another idea I can think of would be allow you to select who you want to clamp.
"... Not an attack, just a friendly question. I've noticed you do this fairly often. ..."
to stop adding ellipses (that mess up the text especially if there is a lot of them) allowing you to read. This is especially for links or side notes that relate to the main text but is added interest. Also I use hackernews as a scribble ( http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157600280904949/ ) for later posts on flickr
"... Bundling messages together would screw up the API and break things like twitterific ..."
No just the display, not the data itself. Just grab the latest submission. If more submissions occur in "N" minutes time frame just display the latest 3, have a click & fetch more if required. It shouldn't break app using the api doing this. Friendfeed does this well.
Though I think that their potential as messaging glue has yet to be realized-- payloads would be a start, as Winer has suggested, incorporating Yahoo Pipes, Twitterfeed, etc, and make twitter the social messaging bus for the entire web.
My hypothesis is that Obvious is working on this stuff (since it's so, well, ovbious!), but isn't ready to release it until they get their infrastructure stuff sorted out, sign up partners, etc.
It gets interesting when they start offering commercial services around it. What a great platform for project teams, or even disaster notifications (civil services), etc. It would be great for emergency services to coordinate their activities. However, that is assuming that it can handle the volume without going down!
Twitter is pretty darn cool, especially if you use it to keep friends and collealleagues up to date with what's going on in your world. It cracks me up to hear people ask "how can I monetize this?" If you have something of value to offer it will monetize itself. Nobody truly enjoys being "sold." If nothing you do is of any value, attempts to monetize are just wasted effort.
If you care about marketing, learn to use Twitter Track (google it).
I get an SMS every time ANYONE mentions RescueTime on Twitter (friend or no). It's slightly creepy when I immedietely pounce on them and thank them. ;-)
I only use Twitter to integrate with beanstalkapps.com - this way my clients can see my SVN commits in real-time (since I'm cheap and don't pay for them to have an account to the beanstalkapps.com backend).
If someone knows of any webapp that implements a) please let me know :D
I'm putting all the twitter accounts so far together here: http://twitter.com/tipjoy http://twitter.com/danielha http://twitter.com/iamdanw http://twitter.com/codergnome http://twitter.com/jraines http://twitter.com/yansarazin http://twitter.com/lukebrdn http://twitter.com/darreld http://twitter.com/hooande http://twitter.com/nkohari http://twitter.com/timothyandrew http://twitter.com/hasanv http://twitter.com/dcurtis http://twitter.com/webwright http://twitter.com/pkaler http://twitter.com/npost http://twitter.com/rosshill http://twitter.com/avinashv http://twitter.com/bootload http://twitter.com/stejules
And I'll add mine: http://twitter.com/abarrera