Here is a little thought that has been kicking around for a while. I believe Twitter is evolving as more and more services plug in to it as the main ‘channel’ for connection and communication. Take foursquare as a perfect example. I can live on foursquare alone as I can connect with others and they can see when I check in. But the real growth of foursquare the app, and the growth of it for my usage comes from Twitter.
Yesterday, I checked in to Doggetts pub in London. The check in was tweeted and picked up by an old school friend whom I had not seen for well over 15 years. So, we hooked up and had a beer. That connection would not have happened without Twitter.
So this backbone thing means that in time people may be signing up for Twitter to access other services and not even participate in the whole ‘what am I doing’ thing. And if Twitter becomes equally important for its transport ability than its ‘conversational’ ability will we see an API type usage fee for services using this backbone.
Its just an idea – what do you think?
barneyc
on Feb 25th, 2010
@ 10:56 am:
I've been party to a number of discussions with people over the last 3 years or so about the alternative (and potentially more lucrative) use of Twitter as an application backbone. The @ and # symbology has created a user-led form of source based routing where not only the message but destination (recipient) and the meaning or context is oft all right there in the tweet.
It doesn't seem a huge leap therefore to see apps utilise the 140 char and start throwing more machine readable control messages back and forth. Of course at that point none of use really want to be seeing this stuff in our streams.
Another challenge for another day methinks.