Category: Twitter

Categories
Apple Brosix Twitter

Tweetie for Mac!

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!

Categories
Apple Brosix General Twitter

Apple to Buy Twitter? Why?

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.

Categories
Aardvark Brosix Real Time Search Twitter

Trying Aardvark

I received a vark.com invitation today – Vark being short for Aardvark which is the hot new startup in the search field. The concept is simple, yet it is something that the big boys of search have yet to tap into – that being real time search within your network of friends. Services such as Twitter offer a similar opportunity and could very well take off and leave Vark in the dust – but the problem with Twitter is that those searches can be impacted by spammers as they begin to become more common in the service.

I tried out Aardvark for a while today and it is a cool service – it will become even more useful if my friends join, which is kind of the point, but the other cool feature of Aardvark is that they farm out the questions to other users as well.

Aardvark represents one of the reasons that Brosix Enterprise Messaging is something that I recommend to my friends and colleagues. I use Brosix regularly because it offers real time features and capabilities that email doesn’t offer and it one-up’s telephones because it offers a number of features including multi-tasking (ie-talking to more than one person), screen sharing, whiteboard, etc.

Check out http://www.brosix.com and also keep an eye on Aardvark when it goes public!

Categories
General Twitter

Twitter Worm Underscores Need for Security

The new worms ripping through Twitter have yet to break into the mainstream tech media but from well documented sources it appears evident that hackers have now slipped into the Twitter-verse – as they have every other part of the internet at this point. This will not impact Twitter’s growing popularity, or shouldn’t at any rate, and it should not impact their plans to monetize.

It has become increasingly clear that a large portion of their monetization plans lie in search, partnerships such as ExecTweets and Skittles.com, plus the possibility of enterprise accounts in terms of providing “sentiment engines” and officially branded Twitter pages.

Enterprise communication does not appear to be in the plans for Twitter, but a number of start ups including Yammer.

Events like these drive home the point that security is of paramount importance in our online life – and of paramount importance in our enterprise life. This should also drive home the point that we absolutely have to be careful when trusting any and all business communications to free services – whether they are GMail-type services, Twitter, or AOL IM.

That is why I always recommend using Brosix Enterprise Messaging for companies that want to seize the moment in Instant Messaging but wish to insure absolute security. You control your network in Brosix so you will not be attacked by spammers or worms unless one of your employees goes rogue.