The Trouble with Twitter

Don’t be surprised to see advertising on Twitter soon. It’s about the only way the service can generate revenue. But will it be enough?

I have to confess I’m relatively new to using Twitter, within the last month during my vacation. I can definitely see the appeal. I don’t use it with a cellphone, but mostly update and follow others using a web browser. There is something relatively nice about the short updates. Often times, you might want to say something, but the blog format requires serious thought, proofreading, and a concrete idea. Making a quick post or comment is convenient, and sometimes the brevity is enough to cover a topic sufficiently, much better than any article or comment. Linking to a blog or article or online resources also allows people to have the option to check it out for themselves. In my brief experience with Twitter, I find that I can get up-to-date information, on my topics of interest, technology, teaching, web resources, and Flash development from the source, by following the right people. In time, I think I can narrow my follow list down to a select number of individuals, and keep myself well-informed to topics that matter.

I can imagine that most educators do not or would not see the point of Twitter, and I don’t see its prevalent adoption very near if ever. I didn’t until recently, when I made a serious effort to follow people and make updates. It’s simplicity is it’s best feature. Twitter will inevitably use advertising to fund itself. Sure, a select group of individuals would pay for a service like Twitter, but what makes it useful is the fact that it has a large user base. If there was a cost, the casual users would disappear or find another service and the main commenters would be big business, advertisers, promoters, and media. Twitter’s appeal is its availability. Everyone would migrate to another service, in the same vein as Napster’s shutdown. I don’t mind ads along as they are done correctly like Google and Delicious and not like NYTimes and Yahoo.

Recently, Twitter shut down SMS support to a number of countries out of the U.S. due to the cost of sending text messages. Twitter should offer the option for interested parties in receiving SMS at a cost. This is a pro feature and could easily be available at a cost.

I plan to utilize Twitter through its RSS capabilities to make updates on our school website this year, and it will be an experiment to see if teachers or students use it.