Institute For The Future

Why We Twitter

Our upcoming conference in Berkeley is going to focus on two trends that are embodied by the recent success of Twitter (we call them Amplified Individual and Visible World - but you'll have to wait). For those who don't know, Twitter is a multi-in, multi-out messaging and "nanoblogging" platform. Here's my timeline.

 

Some good research and analysis on Twitter is starting to come out.

 

A somewhat circuitous analysis of two months of Twitter data (about 1.4 million tweets from about 78,000 individuals) reports some interesting findings for anyone seriously thinking about the future of social software and presence tools in large organizations. Among the earth-shattering conclusions: "We find that people use microblogging to talk about their daily activities and to seek or share information." However, the graphs are seriously worth looking at for any Tech Horizons members thinking about building out this kind of funcitonality in your enterprise.

 

Another good analysis of Twitter's potential is over at Fred Wilson's blog. Fred is a serial venture capitalist based in New York, considered by many to be the leading Web 2.0 torch-bearer. Fred recently invested in Twitter and posted a lengthy analysis of how he sees this kind of presence data enabling future applications.