ALL TOGETHER NOW...
Michael Arrington of TechCrunch describes a new service called TWTTR today:
"Odeo released a new service today called Twttr, which is a sort of “group send” SMS application. Each person controls their own network of friends. When any of them send a text message to “40404,” all of his or her friends see the message via sms."
Om Malik also had a good post on the new service earlier today.
The whole thing strikes me as a pretty out-of-box idea, aptly described by Jason Goldman as "Present Day Blogging".
As Om explains it:
"Twttr is a new mobile social networking application written by Noah Glass (and team), an Odeo-guy, a long time compadre of Blogger founder Ev Williams...
Twttr has married Short Code Messaging, SMS with a way to create social groups. By sending a text message to a short code (for TWTTR) you can send your location information, your mood information or whatever and share it with people who are on your social-mob! Best part - no installation necessary!"
It is pretty painless to get started. Just make sure you're on a good SMS text pricing plan if you really plan on using the service.
Check it out if you want to try the next bleeding in edge in live, location-driven, state-informed blogging, whether you're on your PC or your phone.
A good way to get a sense of what's going on on twttr at any time, is look at the "public time-line", which scrolls through a live stream of twttr messages at any given time. Bookmark it, and check it out from time to time.
And as any new Web 2.0 service, TWTTR already has it's own blog.
Looking at the public time-line, it does seem like one's looking at a big, group IM (instant messaging) session.
Of course, in wanted, one can mark one's messages to a given individual or a group as private, and it won't show up on the public time-line.
Feel free to add me as a friend. My screen name is "MParekh", and twttr URL is
At first glance, the applications seems simple, trivial, and/or trite. Something that'd appeal to teenagers, and very few other demographics.
But some more thought, and one can come up with some interesting, real-world applications where this kind of communications can be pretty useful, especially if one can set up countless public/private groups that could be tagged, indexed and discovered in an easy way.
At the very least, it can have many more, user-generated entry fields titles beyond "What are you doing?" that's available now.
As usual, applications like this can have both positive and negative uses. So caution and care needs to go into it's on-going design and development.
But on the whole TWTTR fields some innovative uses for technologies that've been out there for a while.
Pretty cool. Recommended.
It is pretty painless to get started. Just make sure you're on a good SMS text pricing plan if you really plan on using the service.
i agree.
Posted by: Angel | Thursday, July 20, 2006 at 04:17 AM
Good post!!
Posted by: Christina | Friday, July 21, 2006 at 11:47 AM