Prompt's TechBlog

If I were to bet on which Web 2.0 site is going to be 2007's YouTube, I reckon I could do worse than pin my money on Twitter.

At first glance, Twitter doesn't look like much. The idea is that you type into a box what you're doing right now, in 150 characters or fewer. If you have friends on Twitter, you can see what they're all doing right now too. You can send in updates via a browser or by SMS, and you can receive updates from friends by SMS as well.

If you don't have any Twitter friends, you can still view the 'public timeline', a constantly updating kaleidoscope of ephemeral statements uttered by ineffably cool people who probably all run web startups in fashionable enclaves of San Francisco.

Yes, Twitter is the kind of site for which the adjective 'solipsistic' was invented. But despite (or probably because of) that, it is totally compelling. It takes the ego-trip of blogging, the popularity contest of MySpace and the social convenience of text messaging, and distils them into one simple site where you can prattle away about your fascinating life while spying on the cool people, collecting new and exotic friends, and organising your social engagements. What's not to like about that?

Twitter's 2.0 credentials are impeccable: it's a by-product of the Obvious Corporation, a company run by Blogger founder Evan Williams, and whose primary product is Odeo, an aggregator of podcasts and web radio stations. Expect the by-product to have eclipsed the main product by this time next...week, probably.


tags: twitter | odeo | evhead