Hold on a second here.  I’m not seeing a huge decline in Tweets, course it’s a little hard to tell since I can only pull 20 reqs/hr through Twhirl.

The discussion and debate about Twitter’s untimely (maybe ironic since they just got a whack o’ cash) demise seems to focus on the Replies tab being toast since Tuesday (yeah like Allen Stern muses, why not just have it click through to Summize even with a build in search query for your ID?), okay yeah.  Okay Twitter isn’t the most reliable of services at the moment.  However as Steve Hodson notes..

Surely there is something else to talk about other than whether or not the Twitter bird has taken a crap on your forehead. Source: WinExtra » What’s more irritating – a dead Twitter or whining users?

Yes there is something else to talk about.  We look at this as a chance to help Twitter and FriendFeed and all to follow to do some cool ass shit.

I like Twitter for its immediacy and brevity.  It’s just there and (when it worked) simply elegant.  I like FriendFeed as well, granted I haven’t been on it as much lately because I’ve been busy, but it’s different.

As I read the commentary about everyone moving to FriendFeed (odd no one is mentioning Jaiku or Pownce or Plurk), I’m just not buying into it.  Twitter has a great place in our communications world.  I believe that we’re at a point where we can see what is important for us:

• We like rapid communications to people without needing to write a post or send an email.
• We like commentary on what we send out there
• We like it to be fast, stable, and able to be used from a variety of devices in a variety of ways (SMS, IM, etc)
• We like to be able to send other information into the stream (e.g. RSS feeds)

I don’t see FriendFeed doing all of that right now.  Pownce and Jaiku do a lot of this, but haven’t been able to capitalize on the opportunity to increase their user base (or at least participation rate).

This is my idea (it’s just forming so forgive any gaps) … no one service can do it all.  It seems to be too, too much.

Twitter, you’re great at sending messages out, so maybe become like a POP server?  FriendFeed, great at aggregating, find other ways for us to get brief updates.  All the other tools … FriendFeed started the trend to pull things together, take this as a the universal inbox idea.

So, the time might be right to work together.  Find a way for it to become irrelevant that you prefer Twitter or Pownce or Jaiku (or whatever) just you send stuff out, people read it, they reply you get it—in the place where you sent it.

Right now I have Twitter open in Twhirl and in Firefox.  I have FriendFeed in Twhirl and Firefox.  And having discovered Summize this week that’s open too … now I don’t think FriendFeed has all the parts here, close, but not quite.

This might be the “what’s next” that I’ve been waiting for.  The 21st century version of the email revolution.

Let’s hope so.

Post from: EveryJoe

Tide is changing in microblogging but it isn’t choosing one service over another

Sure I could update both Pownce and Jaiku through Twhirl, but why?  I don’t go there to check replies, conversations or threads.  Through the conversation of tweets and DMs, Tim and I agreed that this smelled like a great blog post.  He beat me to the punch:

Is that enough to explain its success? I don’t know — but I’d love to hear what you think. Source: May the best product win? — Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

So what is it?  For me it’s all about Newton.  No, not the PDA, Sir Isaac.  Inertia and momentum.  Twitter started gaining huge amounts of momentum last year at SXSWi and by summer it became the de facto backchannel for tech events and conferences.  Sure Pownce and Jaiku came out and offered interesting things.  Pownce has groups, events, file sharing.  Jaiku lets me (as I just noted on FriendFeed) pull in other streams into my Jaiku stream.  None of those things keep me there.  I flirted with both services for a while (especially when Twitter was more than a tad wonky), but eh, Twitter kept pulling me back.

Bottom line the momentum and inertia that Twitter has built up means that, essentially, my friends are there.  The people I want to chat with (in 140 characters or fewer), the news I want to get (and blog), the cool people I keep meeting (way to many to mention here–and I’d surely forget someone), and just the other “stuff” that goes on (I’m not too sure about this colour wars things, but hey).

Take MS Office vs WordPerfect.  It was momentum and early marketshare that made this a battle over before it finished (I started with IE vs Firefox too, but I think the tide might be turning there).  MS Office isn’t the greatest set of tools in the world, but we all are forced to save things in DOC, XLS, and PPT format, why?  Because that’s what everyone else uses.  Send an OpenOffice doc and you’ll get emails back that “I can’t open this…”.  It isn’t better, it’s momentum.

Twitter got the momentum (and mindshare) early and has kept it.  In spite of its failings, we stick with Twitter.  Can it lose the lead and be replaced?  Oh certainly.  Look at Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel.  Right now, though, Twitter just needs to stay stable and improve some key things and they will sail on.

Post from: EveryJoe

Why is Twitter winning when it isn’t the best? It’s the swarm and peeps who win out.