I've been playing with Twitter for the past couple weeks, to see for myself whether it is: a) the latest Web 2.0 fad; b) a truly cool new tool; or c) another harbinger of the collapse of modern civilization.
My tentative conclusion has been Option B: While I personally have yet to read (or send!) a useful Twitter, , I can see how it could be great for a dispersed group of people collaborating on a project, or intensely focused on a particular topic. And of course, for folks looking for the best band playing at SXSW.
For the life of me, though, I couldn't put my finger of a specific example that would be compelling outside the nerd-hipster community that already loves this sort of stuff.
But today Rex Hammock came to the rescue, posting his predictions for real-world, really important uses. (And he was talking about TwitterGram, Dave Winer's media-hack to cram audio into Twitter. I'm already behind the curve...)
He wrote:
... think about such a service in the context of an emergency like Virginia Tech. In five minutes, from start to finish, using Twitter and Twittergram, one can set up an emergency broadcasting system that sends out text-message alerts and audio-alerts via RSS. With a little bit of preparation and planning, the channel can be set up in advance, allowing hundreds, even thousands, to subscribe to the Twitter feed (available via SMS, IM or Web) or, now, podcast feed.
That would be useful -- and Hammock's emergency broadcast idea is the catalyst I needed to "think diffent."
The main sticking point for me had been the signal-to-noise ratio. There are very few people I want to follow moment-by-moment, all the time, and I certainly don't want pings every 3 minutes, 24/7, from political campaigns, think tanks or the New York Times. But just as the military pre-positions equipment on ships and bases around the world for possible future use, an organization or individual can easily set up Twitter feeds that don't normally get updated -- basically putting them in cold storage for future use.
Even better would be a Twitter setting that let you adjust notification levels on a feed-by-feed basis. Then few friends' updates go to your phone, most other twitters go only to your GoogleTalk or AIM account, and a few are essentially on hold -- but still there as part of your account, ready to be re-activated the moment you need them.
Facebook has a rough approximation of this with its News Feed Preferences. When Twitter does likewise -- or when Facebook, Google Talk, et al roll out their own Twitter-like offerings -- this could get interesting.
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