Sorry, I just couldn’t help myself – to not take the opportunity to badly mix a metaphor with the “pig + bird” mashup would just be out of character!
The hot news of late has been along two intersecting themes – the staggering (dare we say) viral growth of Twitter, and the impact of this exploding conversation machine on the popular news topic of Swine Flu.
We’ve all done it, we’ve googled our name. And, in the process, we’ve found all the other Perry Evans’ of the world. There’s Perry Evans in Hollywood, Perry Evans the gospel singer (my favorite alter ego) and Perry Evans the family practice physician in Cleveland, and so on. This practice has even been the subject of an indie documentary film named, appropriately “Google Me“. Problem is, all name matches are “correct search answers”, but the consumer isn’t well served for meaningful people search on today’s Google.
Denver, CO April 14, 2009 – A spokesperson for the US airline industry today announced that the Inter-airline Technology Standards Committee has paved the way for solving a congestion problem that has plagued the industry for decades. “Consumer frustration over the inflight contention for open restrooms has been mounting.” Our Restroom Contention Task Force met with our Social Technology Platform team, and eureka!, we discovered the perfect solution, building on our new WIFI plans – Twitter!” stated Sally De Bain, industry spokesperson.
“We envision connecting bathroom sensors to Twitter – passengers simply follow the #flightnumber to be alerted when a restroom is available. “We’re still discussing whether to trigger the alert when the door is open, when the toilet flushes or when the sink is activated. Before launching the beta trial, we need to determine how we support premium flier models (code named “Royal Flush”), such that alerts from toilet flushes go to frequent fliers, ahead of door alerts for economy passengers.”
heh – hey, it could happen!
The industry buzz is rapidly forming with the possibilities for Twitter to be the real time alert engine for just about anything and everything that changes state.
If you haven’t seen the marquis local small business example it’s worth a quick read. Bakertweet profiles a London-based bakery that worked with their creative agency (located across the street) to apply Twitter to alert followers as fresh baked goods come out of the oven.
My point with the tongue-in-cheek airlines example is to point out two emerging realities of the rapidly morphing Twitter ecosystem:
I don’t have time now to really dissect the latter, but it’s near and dear to where my head/passion is these days. Filtering and tagging of streams of conversations and alerts is a VERY BIG THING. Both in terms of scale of problem and potential of opportunity.
In the meantime, I’d point you to a thought provoking post by Twine CEO Nova Spivack, and the ensuing debate stimulated in the comments. Clay Shirky’s astute comment also rings very true: “the problem isn’t information overload, it’s filter failure“.
Twine Blog Post: Can Twitter Survive What is About to Happen to It?
So, fasten your seat belt, there’s some potential for turbulence in Twitter’s open blue skies!