Twitter, Tina Fey, and the Future of Micro-Blogging

May 15, 2008 Author: Guest Writer | Filed under: Mashable!

This guest post was contributed by Bernard Moon, who authors the blog Silicon Moon.

When the sitcom “30 Rock” began its run, some of my friends weren’t wild about Tina Fey, the show’s star and creator, saying she should “stay in the writer’s room” or that she “looked too mousy.” A few months later, however, those same guys were talking about how hot she was. Fey has since become a mainstream darling. Twitter is Web 2.0’s Tina Fey. Not so attractive initially, Twitter got better the more you looked at it. Case in point: Although I tested Twitter as soon as it launched, I eventually ended up sitting on my account because I wasn’t enamored by early adopters and Silicon Valley geeks listening to each other talk. Today, that situation has changed: While the echo chamber still exists, Twitter seems to be reaching a critical mass that will push it into the mainstream.

An obvious target group for Twitter is the youth and SMS (Short Message Service) markets. The reason for this is that micro-blogging services (such as Twitter, Pownce, and Zannel) provide an easy alternative for blasting messages to multiple contacts, and teens are prolific SMS users. Although wireless carriers in Korea have provided an online platform for broadcasting SMS messages through mobile phones since early 2000—a service favored by night club owners and party planners—I find it highly doubtful that U.S. carriers will be able to do the same (in the process creating a viable competitor to Twitter and others) since they’ve stumbled so many times before in the past (acquisition is a reasonable possibility). Since in addition to their SMS activities, many high school kids are becoming “wall” crazy on Facebook, I assume micro-blogging services could keep more of them glued to their mobile devices.

As Twitter and services like it move into the mainstream, I see a few trends emerging. One is the implementation of increased structure within these platforms. This will be related to better discovery of information ranging from simple things as tags to third-party search engines. Additional infrastructure will also be created to allow people to join larger conversations and to extend the focus of such services beyond today’s echo chamber. Since we’re dealing with a broadcast medium, you could call these broader conversations “channels.” Pownce, for example, allows groups, but I’m thinking about completely open channels for everyone on a platform (or meshed platform, if that ever happens)—for example, national public channels on marketing ideas, baby channels, a Red Sox Nation channel, even a Suze Orman channel. While short-form blogging doesn’t fulfill every need, it can be an excellent venue for brainstorming, generating new ideas, and creating an insightful medium that goes beyond mere ego-tracking.