Twitter — like SMS but for the Web

by Mathew on April 8, 2007 · Comments

Joi Ito has a great post about how Twitter is a lot like SMS — something that most of the developed world (and even some of the less developed world) has been used to for some time now, but which still strikes most of us in North American as a novelty.

“Twitter was funny for me because it was like the whole “laptop crowd” getting the “aha” that Europe and Asia had with SMS awhile back…

…the idea that the Internet isn’t about “cyberspace” that turns on when you open your laptop, but that the Internet was something that you could carry around with you and that could ping you when it needed you.”

I wonder what non-North American readers think of all the hand-wringing about how Twitter and similar apps are going to destroy our lives.

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  • I have been trying to wrap my head around twittter for a few weeks now. I do enjoy reading what my "friends" are doing, and I enjoy telling them what I am doing - to a certain degree, but I can almost see the novelty factor wearing off very soon.
  • The full potential of Twitter hasn't yet been realized.

    I've added my Twitter RSS feed into a 'Lifestream', including stuff from Last.fm, Del.icio.us, my 'blog et cetera. using Yahoo! Pipes.

    In one fell swoop, I've gone from the from intermittent, isolated and seemingly random posts on my 'blog to providing (those with the will and time to read my feed) a narrative of where the inspiration comes from.

    I might not be the most compelling narrator, but I'm sure there are guys out there who will make something like this The Next Big Thing...
  • Stan_Schroeder
    SMS is (in most cases) one-to-one. Twitter is one-to-many. In my opinion, Twitter is not going to go far, simply because all of its functionality could be easily replaced by any Instant Messaging program. I honestly wonder why haven't any of them reacted yet.
  • Me, I've been fascinated by the whole Twitter thing. I tried it a couple of months ago, wrote about it and promptly forgot it as well...

    And I think you're right, US bloggers find twitter fascinating because of the SMS part mostly, and since in Europe we've been using SMS for some years now, the novelty just isn't there.

    The worst part, for Twitter, will be when the fad dies away, as it seems to be doing (check twitter.com's traffic in Alexa, it seems to have reached a peak).

    Now, destroying our lives? No, you just need to be aware of the usage conventions for any instant messaging, SMS not being very different that any messenger-like app: don't use it if you need immediate reply, don't even expect a reply, don't expect to engage into a conversation through it, etc, etc...
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