TWITTER

The latest viral phenomenon on the Web is the so called “micro-blogging”: services that allow people to publish small texts or stories from computers and cell phones, combined with social network features. Twitter was launched publicly last summer, and in the beginning, it didn’t seem to get too much attention. The use of Twitter started to take off in the middle of March, after they won the 2007 Web Award in the South by Southwest conference in Texas. In their acceptance speech, they said “We'd like to thank you in 140 characters or less. And we just did!” As some influential bloggers attending the conference lauded the service on their blogs, interest spread quickly among the Valley’s key opinion-leaders, and the users’ statistics started to skyrocket. 

The idea behind Twitter is extremely straightforward, no matter why the name of the company behind it is “Obvious Corporation“ (company’s motto: “We’re Obvious”): create an application that allows users to send short messages, or updates, up to 140 characters, and an individual page (typically, http://twitter.com/username) to publish them, along with applets or “badges“ to make these messages show up in blogs or personal pages. As a user creates an account, she can define a number of people whose activities is interested in following, and she becomes a “follower” of such people. Users can also reciprocate, and if they do so, they become “friends”, and they get displayed in their friends’ page with a tiny icon. Users can set their accounts to accept all followers automatically, or approve them on an individual basis, and they can also define whether they want their updates to be public or restricted to their network of friends and followers. 
Whenever a person publishes a new update, all his or her friends and followers receive it immediately. Updates can be sent through a variety of media: via the Tweeter home page, through desktop applications such as Twitterrific (for Mac), through SMS (standard charges may apply depending on the users’ calling plan), or through instant messaging services such as Gtalk, Jabber, AIM and others. The average user updates on her status every few hours, and is constantly receiving updates from friends in her computer or cell phone. Users can also “nudge” friends to encourage them to update.  
Twitter was created in the offices of Odeo, a podcasting company created by Evan Williams, the founder of Blogger, one of the main companies behind the blogging phenomenon. When Google bought Blogger, Ev left the company, took some months off, and came back with Odeo, a tool for people to create podcasts, or media files distributed over the net. The idea for Twitter started to take off in Odeo’s offices, and Ev quickly decided to put Odeo’s original idea off. In February 19th, he announced in his blog that the company was for sale, and devoted his time and efforts to Twitter’s launch.
With the growing number of new users, Twitter is experiencing numerous challenges related to its growth. The sudden popularity of Twitter has seen the number of messages posted on its site jump from 20,000 to 70,000 a day, and is now growing with an astounding rate of 20% a week. According to HitWise, which measures web traffic, use of the service jumped by 55 per cent the week after the conference, a sudden jump in use that has put a strain on Twitter’s servers, and the service has become “sluggish” as a result. The company is receiving an amazingly high attention (check out the Technorati graph), and being featured in articles in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Business Week, Time… The New York Times even created their own Twitter page, with the motto “All the news that's fit to twit”, and publishes updates on the news every minute. The presidential candidate John Edwards uses Twitter to keep his followers informed about his whereabouts in the campaign, and so do many other celebrities.  
Considered silly and shallow by many, others say that that's precisely why Twitter is on its way to becoming the next killer app. Some people hate it or find it pointless (“I’m sitting here writing about myself sitting here writing”), others think the service is extremely addictive and love the way it allows them to feel close to their friends, no matter where they live. Twitter publishes an API that allows others to create applications using Twitter, such as Twittervision, a mashup of Twitter and Google Maps that displays all public updates in a map that keeps moving all the time all over the world. Others are finding out new users, such as Twittermobs, instant parties that get announced and even sponsored through Twitter. Many people seem to be thinking on potential or smart uses for Twitter these days, whilst the company keep all services free and has to cover expenses for storage, hosting, employee salaries and the SMS being sent to those members who choose that option. 
 
Questions (feel free to remix them or answer them any way you want): 
 
1.	Make a personal assessment on Twitter’s viability and interest. Will Twitter reach widespread adoption? Will Twitter be the next YouTube?
2.	What type of creative uses can you think of for Twitter? Can any of these be somehow monetized? 
3.	What’s the business model behind Twitter? What would be your recommendations for the Twitter team?