Apple – Own Instant Messaging http://owninstantmessaging.com Taking productivity seriously... Tue, 12 May 2009 16:13:00 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.0.1 Tweetie for Mac! http://owninstantmessaging.com/tweetie-for-mac/ Tue, 12 May 2009 16:13:00 +0000 http://owninstantmessaging.com/?p=24 One of the problems that people have with Twitter is that User Interface (UI) is just not that appealing to a lot of folks. It also doesn’t make keeping up with conversations particularly easy. Luckily for Mac users, at least, Tweetie recently launched. It is the latest in a long line of third party app’s for Twitter which improve upon the user experience of the fast growing service.

Wired probably put it best when they said, “Developed by AteBits, Tweetie’s interface is so clean you would think it came straight out of Apple headquarters.”

I highly recommend checking it out.

One of the questions that I have for Twitter is when they are going to take a page from the third party developers and improve upon the UI themselves. Their are a number of changes that they could make which would make the learning curve less stout for new users. My great fear is that they’ll rely on their explosive growth to the detriment of the service – ie: they’ll let the experience stagnate because users are joining.

Having done work for Brosix I know that people want a clean looking UI. Thankfully the Brosix Enterprise Messaging team is hard at work on future editions that will not only work better, but they’ll look better too!

]]> Apple to Buy Twitter? Why? http://owninstantmessaging.com/apple-to-buy-twitter-why/ Wed, 06 May 2009 01:29:46 +0000 http://owninstantmessaging.com/?p=22 According to TechCrunch Apple might be in the process of negotiating with Twitter to purchase the service. This is the hot tech rumor of the day, generating serious buzz. Twitter, of course, being the most buzz worthy service of the moment online. This, as always, has lead to serious discussions about who might purchase the service since buzz worthy services online usually end up being sold – with the notable recent exception of Facebook.

Apple and Twitter joining together would be the stuff of online fan boys dreams. The two companies that internet/computer geeks love the most joined together? The stuff of their dreams.

The question is why would Apple purchase Twitter?

Twitter offers buzz, sure, but Apple always has buzz. It could be that they want to purchase Twitter to generate a little renewed hype in case of Steve Jobs stepping down permanently – but that seems a little far fetched, especially since Twitter would allegedly cost Apple $750,00,000.

Twitter does not offer revenue to Apple although it does offer a large and growing user base.

The question is how will Twitter find revenue? It won’t be in the enterprise field, at least not in terms of enterprise internal communications. Rumored sources of revenue are sentiment engines – aka a complex search offered by Twitter to companies to see who is saying what – and sponsored corporate accounts.

Enterprise communications are often slow to make the leap after all. Email has made the transition but instant messaging still lags behind even though enterprise messaging services such as Brosix offer encryption, collaborative tools, and the like. It will be interesting to see how Twitter unfolds.

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