Why Twitter is Hot in Mobile

I started my career at Ericsson updating some of the SMS charging code for GSM back in 1991. I you look at the 10 years that followed, I think it’s safe to say that SMS was underestimated by the industry that created it. It’s easy to overlook the impact of 160 characters. 

In the same way, it’s easy to overlook the impact of the 140 characters in a Twitter microblog.

I really didn’t get it at first. Maybe I am excused - Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google had to apologise after calling twitter a “poor man’s email system” recently. He didn’t get it. 

I want you to understand it because it’s becoming big, like SMS is big.

twitter + mobile + search gives me and millions of others the ‘what are you doing, and where’ presence statements which together become a personalised, almost real-time news feed that is beating any news agency in this world. The news agencies are forced to follow.

The Turkish airliner crash at Schipol airport was broken by twitter 15 minutes ahead of major news outlets, and apparently even CNN picked up the news via twitter.  Sky news in the UK has employed a “twitter correspondent”. There are dozens of other examples.

From Wikipedia:

“During the 2008 Mumbai attacks, eyewitnesses sent an estimated 80 tweets (that’s twitter messages) every five seconds as the tragedy unfolded. In addition, users sent out vital information such as emergency phone numbers and the location of hospitals that needed blood donations. In January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 ditched in the Hudson river after colliding with birds. Janis Krums, a passenger on one of the ferries that rushed to help, took a picture of the downed plane as passengers were still evacuating and tweeted it via TwitPic before traditional media arrived at the scene”.

Right now, Google search cannot keep up with real updates from real people in near-real time. That is what separates Twitter from Google, lets Twitter reject a $500M Facebook offer and inspired VC’s to pump another $35M into Twitter.

Twitter usage has really opened up for me since I started using Twobile which neatly presents everything on a mobile screen and makes it easy to navigate. M.twitter.com isn’t bad either for any mobile browser.

I have seen a lot of ‘intelligent, context-aware’ services which try to plow a road through a jungle of information. Twitter is relayed like the jungle drums. It is people-centric.

This article? Aggregated from Twitter sources …     twitter.com/alisapta

If you now have an appetite for more and want a Twitter course, get one here from Julia Angman at Wall Street Journal.  

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The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author, and in no way represent Ericsson AB's official or implied position on the issues discussed.