Technology

Twitter’s coming of age

Twitter may have come of age.

I’m far from the first to declare it so.

A few weeks ago, Adam Walker Cleveland said that, he “realized the incredible resource it can be - from questions about what airport to take, to HTML/CSS issues I run across when I’m designing websites, to what movie we should rent…when I post a question on Twitter, I’m almost guaranteed a response back from someone within a minute. So, I have an incredible amount of people available as resources at any time of the day - and they don’t have to take the time to sit down and write out an email, when you can generally say what you need to in 140 characters.”

And yesterday, Joshua Blankenship asked if Twitter has now crossed over from the geek world to the mainstream with the likes of Shaq, Brittany Spears, and countless celebrities joining the fun.

Twitter has become quite the public relations tool.

In the campaign I spent the last several months working on… we utilized Twitter to update followers to where Rick was across the state and to share favorable news clippings.

Personally, I have used it to follow the tours and daily lives of some of my favorite musicians. Ingrid Michaelson being one. In the days leading up to her Portland tour stop that I attended, I saw in a tweet she was spending an evening in my town. I was able to reply, and strike up a conversation with her over where to eat, as well as fun things to do with a free day in Portland.

In addition to feeding my celebrity news addiction (of which I really don’t have, but denial is the first sign of a problem, right?), I utilize Twitter as my de facto source of news. No longer is CNN on the television in the background. Instead, I can enjoy music, and still be informed in occasional 140 character or less news updates from the likes of CNN, MSNBC, The Oregonian, KMTR, Eugene Magazine, The Oregon Daily Emerald, and even the official University of Oregon athletics site, GoDucks.com.

In fact, while working on the campaign, Rick Dancer had an interview with KMTR where they asked about me, in addition to another similar instance with Eugene Magazine. Through Twitter, I’ve gained a reputation with various people of influence without them ever having met me.

Back to the news though, if the tweet is something I want more detail about, I click the link at the end of the update… if not, I can brush it off quicker than any other source of news, including RSS feeds. In fact, Twitter has begun to replace my RSS reader. For sites and blogs I enjoy most, I subscribe to the authors tweets. I’m instantly notified of new posts, much like this blog, and now Epinoia Café do.

If that wasn’t enough, the third party add ons to Twitter have blossomed. Sites like Brightkite and Loopt allow you to use your cell phone to add a link of your location at the end of your tweets for easy journaling/tracking of your daily life or out of state road trips, like my weekend getaway to Washington a couple months ago.

In addition, a year or so ago, Facebook added the Twitter like feature of status updates, “Joshua is…” which has all but made short updates common place for younger generations. Plus, with the ability to use Twitter to update my facebook status and Away Messages for IM accounts, Twitter has become the one status to rule them all.

Finally, who doesn’t love to just people watch? Twitter is the perfect place to just observe people and culture, and this third party web app which allows you to watch tweets in real time that deal with what people ”love,” “hate,” “think,” “believe,” “feel,” and “wish.” Sometimes profound, often trivial… it’s not much different then general observation of people in public.

Twitter has come a long way from the, “I’m eating a PB&J for lunch,” days.

In fact, Twitter just might have come of age.

Some Twitter Resources:
Obviously the most important — Follow Josh on Twitter
Sign up for Twitter
Download Twitterrific, one of many desktop Twitter clients.
Twitter Application for Facebook (to automatically update your FB status)