As Twitter continues its atmospheric climb, the true utility of the service is still evolving. It’s often the case that when a technology spreads to the masses that new and novel uses surface that were never intended, nor even contemplated, by its creator.
Twitter is no exception. Just a few nights ago, I was watching CNN cover the Republican National Convention. Within the broadcast, the news anchors were trying to gauge the sentiment of the populous through a real-time Twitter feed. Twitter’s original intention of seeing what your friends are doing right now was actually tapping into something much more powerful: How does the market feel right now?
What had previously taken months of research and tens of thousands of dollars now can be done instantaneously, and at the Web 2.0 price, which is free.
In a recent interview I did with Jonathan Cottrell and Chris Heald, Blippr CEO and CTO, respectively, yet another Twitter use-case surfaced. These startup execs explained that Twitter was a critical tool for intimate customer interactions. Heald states “we’ve made fans out of critics by allowing customers to interact with people within our company.” Twitter now provides companies the ability to cut through the oftentimes infuriating cooperate veil to reveal the human face behind businesses.
Even business development has extended to twitter. Cottrell explained that his company’s recent partnership with 12 Seconds Inc. was initiated through Twitter. This will be a trend that will continue on Twitter. It is the natural progression of aggregating likeminded people around a topic or company of similar interest, and providing them the tools for interaction. One might even compare it to a chat-room, which never ends.
It is a futile effort to say for certain what utilities Twitter will offer the market as its user base continues to expand.
It will likely be much different than the original goal of tracking your friends.
