Is it a bird, is it a plane? NO...its Twitter!!

Is it a bird, is it a plane? NO...its Twitter! A global phenomena evoking more emotion than global warming - 140 chars that claim to have more impact than the Gutenberg Bible. So let me peel the onion and unveil the crystal ball...I can tell you the future only if you suspend your disbelief. The easiest way to start is not by explaining what Twitter is because the Twitter guys have not figured it out themselves but by painting Twitter's future with my own coloring brush.

People believe that Twitter is a fad and will hopefully disappear like its predecessors - Pet Rocks, Atkins and Friendster. It sure has all the characteristics of one - lightning fast adoption and unusually high interest gaining heavily from the bandwagon effect or as my Professor calls it - the "Information Cascade". Quite honestly, no one knows if it will stick around and for how long.
You need money to make money, friends to make friends and in the Twitter world - followers to find more followers. Eager, early Twitter adopters are flexing their muscle to support this seemingly democratic medium as they realize they can become overlords given the impending doom of the fourth estate. Suddenly, its like 1849 again and quite honestly during a gold rush...you pick a shovel and start digging. Bloggers, movie stars, politicians, musicians, news media and most of all - the common man have embraced Twitter at a frenetic pace with the aim of striking it rich. Suddenly, the general populous is no longer a statistic that can be analyzed by experts and reported by successful news publishers - the medium has empowered individuals by projecting their thoughts loud and clear across the interwebs. Some of you may be thinking this is not new - we already have Blogs, RSS feeds, Social Networks. Yes, we do but just like there was an mp3 player before iPod and a search engine before Google - these products did not have the hype, PR, traction to cross the chasm. Be it by luck, timing, name...Twitter has captured mindshare and taken the world by storm.

The real question is - can Biz Stone capitalize this craze and convert Twitter into an enduring service the way Howard Schultz transformed Starbucks into a premium coffeehouse or Dietrich marketed Krating Daeng as Red Bull? Is the momentum strong enough to leap over the Tipping point? Sure - Google did that and so has Amazon. I would go as far as to posit it was this craze that brought Obama into power. There is a compelling case to be made for the power of being plugged into the minds of millions or as the Jedi call it the Force (Midi-chlorians).
You may say, I don't really want to bother with all the crap people have to say. Maybe not but information is power and real-time information is like coke...psychologically addictive. But the feed is full of speculation, rumours and spam? Well, this is a problem a good algorithm can solve exactly like Google did during the early internet era. Not a trivial task for sure but definitely possible. Who has time for this sh*t? I would speculate that 20% of your life is idle time. If you use half of this time to assimilate into the collective - it would give you the powers of the borg:). I don't mean replace personal and people time with Twitter time - on the contrary...use the tool to stay connected to world and the world to stay connected to you.

Is this what the future looks like? Well, technology is finally catching up with the way people interact or want to interact however as Heisenberg's theory of uncertainty states - observing an event changes it. As more people adopt social networking so will their needs. Twitter/Facebook will need to keep changing and pushing the envelope because there's a long way to go.

For today's generation "anything more than 140 characters in a lecture". So keep it short and may the force be with you!