Twitter saw the year out having been designated Best Web LittleCo of 2007 by ReadWriteWeb.com. Twitter was chosen because it “has captured the imagination and become a new hybrid of chat, social networking and blogging.” That is despite Twitter’s high popularity outside the mainstream, Josh Catone reports. So is Twitter expected to move to the mainstream? The answer is a definite YES.
“Most of my non-tech friends haven’t yet even heard of Twitter. But 2008 could be the year all that changes. Twitter might be about to grow up”, Catone expects. He cites some of his buddies saying the same. Patrick Ruffini at TechPresident predicts 2008 could be the year of Twitter. The site’s mass appeal is again and again evidenced by its server downtime when major events take place, notably the US State of the Union address and Macworld. Keep a watchful eye on the primaries to see more direct mass reporting on single topics by Twitter users. “While these spikes reveal some troubling capacity issues that Twitter will need to deal with, this is the surest sign that the service has gone mainstream in a way not anticipated by its founders,” Ruffini believes.
I totally agree with this. Twittering people are interesting individually, but the game becomes really addictive if you see the actions of several people who are in the same circumstances. The reporTwitters site’s main page shows reporters bantering about their professional lives and this is an example of something that has potential to be taken to a next level.
Catone spells out a few advantages of Twitter as a reporting tool, which I will cite and comment on:
It’s fast. Increasingly mainstream news reporters and bloggers are utilizing Twitter to put up news tid bits as they happen, and commentary as it pops into their heads. Two examples of reporters using the tool: Time.com, Ana Marie Cox Twitter account. She’s hilarious at times. Slate’s John Dickerson also Twitters to report from the US presidential campaign trail. There are a few more high profile reporters using Twitter.
It’s open. Twitter has opened it API architecture. The very existence of ReporTwitters is a direct result of this. The number of tools is growing that helps people expand and use the service, Catone says. Mashups that are truly useful, in my opinion, are those that allow you to filter by content without losing the real time experience. Google’s US elections mashup is a fine example, but also check out Politweets, which is readwriteweb’s own Twitter about the US elections. (Incidentally, Politweets is nominated for “Best Political Application” in the Golden Dot Awards) I personally think that the mashups are evolving rather slowly. Given the potential of Twitter I had reckoned that every newspaper would be in on the game by the end of 2007. Of course I do appreciate that it’s a load of work often for highly niche output. Twitter is a tool that editors seem to encourage but the initiatives that are garnering most interest definitely all take place on personal title and don’t involve huge programming efforts. ReporTwitters needs to find the right balance here; on the one hand it is hard not to want to make too much of a group of like minded professionals’ Tweets and on the other hand it is too easy to lose a sense of direction if the tweets are not slapped onto a wire story or a recogniseable development.
It’s two-way. For reporters that aren’t afraid to get down and dirty, Twitter is a golden opportunity to build a rapport with readers and gauge public opinion. It also makes readers feel more connected to the news when they can participate in a discussion about it as it happens, often times with the people reporting it first hand, says Catone. That’s so true. Reporters can find out easily if someone they are about to interview has a Twitter account and send them messages. Even conduct an entire interview over Twitter. That builds enormous buzz and the ‘conversation’ could be printed right next to the resulting story. Again, it’s what’s meant to take place at ReporTwitters. Anyone that has suggestions how we get this off the ground, shout!