Twitter Review

All this week, I’ve been playing around with Twitter. Twitter has brought internet communication to another level. Some see it as the next irc, some see it as a tumblelog, and others see it as one huge chat room. I think it’s a bit more than all of these things, and it’s really taking a step forward.

Twitter comes from the same people who brought us Odeo. I really think they hit the nail on the head with this one. Twitter is becoming a very fun, and cool way to share what’s going on, and to talk to all of your friends.

It can be used for many things. You can use it for a tumblelog (blog, with entries of 1 line). This works out very well, because it’s extremely simple to submit messages to Twitter. You can use their web interface, which is just a simple text box, which is a simple and easy to get things done. Then you can use your cell phone, by just texting, which in my opinion, is very cool. You can even set it up, so that you can use jabber instant messaging, you can have it IM you with updates from friends, and you can submit messages.

So Twitter, is really 3 web apps in one, but the thing I see it’s most used for is for communication, people talk through it. I think that Twitter is taking IRC to the next level. It’s allowing you to talk, right through the browser, and even from your phone or a jabber client. It’s not restricting it’s users to a single protocol, and client. This freedom is really what sets Twitter apart from IRC.

One of the things I like about it is that you can customize your own design, without making it look bad. You can change colors, change background image, but it’s absolutely impossible to make it look as bad as some of the myspace pages you’ll see out there.

Twitter has very good usability. Everything is really simple to use. Posting is just as easy hitting a submit button. Adding friends is done by a simple click of a little link that says Add. Implementing you comments and updates into your website, or blog is extremely easy. Everything seems to be well thought out, and it really shows.

Another thing I really like about Twitter, is the community. Right now there are a lot of really cool people that are posting away, and the blogosphere is really starting to react to Twitter. Here’s an example of a Twitter user, who really like his Twitter! Josue decided to post a video talking about why he likes it.

He mentioned a few cool projects in the video, one of them is called Stream. Stream was done by Jeremy Keith, of Adactio. It aggregates all of his comments on twitter, and puts them on his site, along with other social services he uses.

So if you haven’t played around with Twitter yet, go give it a shot!

Screenshots