Reply-to-All SMS and Twitter
I was reading How Twitter Was Born, a post that has been going around the Twitterverse for a while. Twitter’s initial use, struck me:
I remember that @Jack’s first use case was city-related: telling people that the club he’s at is happening. “I want to have a dispatch service that connects us on our phones using text.” His idea was to make it so simple that you don’t even think about what you’re doing, you just type something and send it.
That was my initial use of Twitter. I wanted to tell my list of friends, what’s cool, where. Deals. Whom I saw. I never intended to have discussions or conversations, or do things like brand monitoring, and so on.
A few days ago, a friend sent an SMS message to five people, and in the message he said CC: followed by a bunch of names. Imagine if SMS, supported Reply-to-All? Then you’ll have “conversations” amongst many folk (SMS isn’t limited to 160 characters only nowadays – its 160*3!).
Today, my use of Twitter is similar to what it was before. I do write random thoughts, especially when I’m on the mobile web. When on the desktop, I end up using a client like twhirl, to keep track of conversations. I reply. I contribute. I ask questions, and expect to get answers from my collective network.
Definitely interesting to see how my Twitter usage has evolved. In fact, its interesting to see how Twitter itself has evolved. Its now awash with PR/marketing/business types, and a lot are using Twitter as a business tool.