And today I really got lucky I guess. Within few days, my wish has been granted.

Actually, few days back I was exploring Twitter to see what all new additions they have incorporated and was happy to see the Goodies section with easily customizable widgets for Profile, Search & Favorite Tweets. Now today they have added the widget for Twitter Lists.

I think this is brilliant and twitter sure has got some attention from people about this new feature – e.g. within few days of its launch, there were about 37 million twitter lists being created (according to Google). Although suddenly the number has taken a nosedive to about 4 million now. So I guess, Google realized that a huge chunk of those lists are just junk – hence the drop. But I guess that’s a good step since it will at least keep the spammers away from the search results.

btw, if you got some time, then do read this detailed post on “Twitter Lists” which brings together a collaborated effort of how Twitter lists can be effectively utilized. And thanks to the author of the posts for inserting some of my comments from my Twitter Lists post.

Note:  I’ve put in my “Social Media Marketers” list in my blog too. Just scroll down to see it on the left hand side. Oh if I’ve missed putting you in my “social media marketers” lists, then do give me a nudge in the comments section and consider it done.

btw, its already quite early in the morning. Need to get ready for a long day ahead of meetings & some amount of intra-city hopping I guess. Expecting to meet some interesting people from the Media & Advertising industry.

And I should probably mention this that its been long long time that I’ve actually seen something worth writing about twitter. And when the talks was doing its rounds about twitter coming up something called “Twitter Lists”, I should say the truth that initially I didn’t think that this would be any different from any other casual development we have seen from Twitter team lately. But when I started using Twitter Lists, my perception has totally changed now.

So rather than jotting down paragraphs, let me put it in points for easy understanding:

1. Twitter lists are great to follow highly targeted people. For example, I wanted to follow the “Social Media Marketers in India“, then simply I tried to get a glimpse in my “Lists Following You” tab and there it is or ask for a recommendation from your twitter peers since they might have come across something worth which might help you.

2. Twitter Lists are great “Perception Builder“. Why? Firstly, if you check your “Lists Following You” tab, then you’ll see what people think about you and thats why they have added you in that list – both from personal front or professional one. Secondly, the lists you create says a lot about you – like I created a list called “Social Media Marketers“. Now if I carry on making lists pertaining to my professional field, then surely it helps build a perception about you.

3. Twitter Lists are a great way to build a “Recommendation Engine“. Twitter lists can help everybody in your network to follow the exact sort of people whom you were trying to connect with. And surely, it makes it easy for follow and connect. Now you might think that then what about sites like “WeFollow“? Now that’s an interesting question – if people get into the bandwagon of “Twitter Lists” then surely I’m left with no doubts that these sort of sites won’t survive long since what Twitter lists does is help people at a micro level build connections; whereas sites like WeFollow just helps you in ego boost to show that you are connected Ashton Kutcher or Oprah. I say who gives really…!!!

But this is not all for me. I see great potential in this application. Some of the things which I would really appreciate seeing in the near future from Twitter are:

1. Search: Twitter should enable some search option which makes searching “Twitter Lists” easier. Like for example, I like to know if there is any lists available for “Social Media Agencies in Mumbai“. And if there is one, then this search option should help me get to that. It just adds to that extra bit of feature needed for twitter lists to make it successful and get that extra bit of mileage & traction.

On this regards, Twitter can integrate “Twitter Lists Search” in Twitter search only with two tabs in place of one tab (like Google). See the screenshot below:

2. At the time of registration only, Twitter should ask users if they would be interested in making any “lists” (like it does for “Suggested Friends“) e.g. Friends, Co-workers, Acquaintances etc which would help to categorize the following/follower list. This sort of feature helps organize the chaos around twitter a bit.

These are some of my initial thoughts on twitter lists. May be, I would add on as it evolves. But what do you say – will it last the hype cycle?

But today I read something quite interesting enough to again dabble into the twitter echo chamber; According the study conducted by Penn State in the US showed that about 20 percent of the tweets contained product information in the form of asking and providing information.

What it simply means is that users are directly commenting something about brands which actually gives companies a “rich source” of information concerning issues and questions that customers have regarding their products. Now that’s where I’ve always seen value in such interactive mediums.

It’s these large amount of brand data on Twitter which can pretty much provide any marketer with a sentiment map if he has to monitor and analyze tweets over time e.g.  what do your customers and non customers think about your product; what features are going down well / not so well or how are your competitors faring. Also, these tweets which are used to express reaction (both positive and negative) while they have engaged with some products and services are about as close as one can get to the customer point of purchase for products and services.

Now if you’re unsure of such research, then the research methodology seems quite fair enough to me at least. It was led by researchers like Jim Jansen, associate professor of information science and technology and Twitter chief scientist Abdur Chowdhury who looked at half a million tweets to conclude the 20 percent figure.

Though 20 percent figure might look paltry in the grand scheme of things, but assuming three million tweets a day, that would translate into 600k posts daily of direct relevance to brands.

Whoa! Now that’s a huge data set and considering that a single company can translate a fraction of that huge chunk of data into something more meaningful is a good bargain I consider since the cost related to such activity is nothing compared to the mega-budget companies consider for consumer insight research, product review or promotion per se. Though such mediums should always be considered with a punch of salt since not too many companies can take some outrageous backlash that many companies have suffered when they had opened the gates. But of course, on the contrary, I see more gain than loss if used purposely and effectively with right social media strategy.

To know more about the past and the recent tech fraternity takes read here and here.

But I’ll straight hit the chord as in what’s more I expect as an user from Yahoo! Meme. But before that, I don’t think it comes close to be called as a Twitter-killer. Also its kind of gives me a distant look & feel of Tumblr, Posterous as well as some features here & there from Friendfeed too.

Some of the good points can I can found out are like clean UI; can post pictures, videos (only from YouTube, Vimeo), music (but only url – may be due to piracy issues) all at one place; can post more than 140 chars (its 2000 characters for them) i.e. more verbose lot might like this feature.

But in my wishlist I would want some more features:

1. I want to post mp3 in not just link format only. Also same goes for posting videos which as of now only allows YouTube & Vimeo.

2. Although its in Alpha version, hope in later release versions they allow easy import of all my contacts especially twitter, facebook & friendfeed with whom I interact daily.

3. Would love to see a bookmarklet or plugin that would allow to share items without having to copy and paste links.

4. Also since the API is not ready yet so 3rd party developers can’t write new desktop and web tools for it.

Hope these couple of things get sorted ASAP. Also I’d this innate desire to get back to Yahoo! system once again. For me, its been like a decade I guess that I’ve used Yahoo! on a daily basis. Now I want to! But looking at Yahoo’s recent frag with Social Networking clan like closing down of SpotM in India, chances are bleak but still am still hopeful.

By the way, if you guys are on Yahoo! Meme, then you can add me here.

But wait this post is not about my twitter musings but something which I’ve been wondering and craving for sometimes. Why can’t we use twitter when we are offline?

We have offline Gmail to take care of our emails when we go for offline mode. You just have to install Google gears which downloads a local cache of your mail. As long as you’re connected to the network, that cache is synchronized with Gmail’s servers. When you lose your connection, Gmail automatically switches to offline mode, and uses the data stored on your computer’s hard drive instead of the information sent across the network.

So why can’t we have the same thing happening for twitter? I would love to see twitter’s Web interface allowing access to my all tweets in my timeline when I go offline. It makes me feel connected always. And not only I’m expecting the minimum offline usage but since twitter is doing some rounds of action of ranking of content and links, it makes more sense to me if offline twitter interface also allows me to go through those links being shared in offline mode by caching webpage files of those links.

Just think – it would be an awesome experience when a friend shares an interesting piece of information and I’m able to access it offline during my flight.

What are you thoughts on the same? Any specific pointers you wana add or simply there are some apps which already do this. Do share!

P.S. Was just talking to one of my twitter friend, Sanjay Mehta who shares some piece of interesting info on this specific development.

Now it’s really big news considering if Twitter is able to do the same, then we will definitely see lots of changes apparently in the web’s dynamic as it will form the contour of real-time search mechanism.

So what are these changes are we taking about? Prima facie, I can predict couple of changes in the way Google created a host of services which formed SEO, SEM and allied services. I’ll try to list some of the evidential changes I forsee in the future, albeit depends on how twitter takes these changes to its users.

1. It creates a great opportunity for SEO professionals who I guess will quickly move into the system to monetize since brands will now give more & more interests via links and moreover users are already connecting with brands from each tweet to another.
2. Google will be impacted since it has more or less won the search engine battle with Yahoo, Microsoft and other services like Mahalo, Craiglist etc but it hasn’t yet developed anything for indexing real-time cues via links/texts. So twitter initially will thrust hard to create a niche category of real-time searchers.
3. People with high reputations in Twitter like Guy Kawasaki, CNN etc will have more influence without any doubt since it consider reputation ranking system. Thats means that they will try to push more link based content to gain more popularity. Already we will check that seeing Tweetmeme acting as popularity filter for twitter.
4. This will become industry wide norm if twitter is able to categorically index and rank web’s currency i.e. content & links. But that will need content filters which I think Twitter won’t have much problem since they already have something in place called Advanced Twitter Search.
5. A definite fallout of URL shorteners lik tinyurl, bit.ly or tr.im etc is evidential if twitter is going to index content and links. But my two cents on RWW news article.
6. Since twitter primarily focussed on mobile as one of the interfaces, I think twitter will stress more on the medium – also because looking at the recent mobile penetration growth across the world, I think twitter won’t forego this opportunity to extend its search capabilities as well as monetization intent.
7. There is a huge possibility that Twitter may extend it core 140 characters “What are you Doing” meme to newer itenary like top trending news feeds page which can act as one point stop for real-time news information.

More thoughts on the same as it develops. These are my quick scribbling of whatever I can forsee in the immediate future. You can add more juice if you have any ideas in your mind.

Finally twitter integrated its search tool into its interface (aka API). Now thats few days back when I was vacationing away from everything and the only device I has is my Nokia E71. Though it was a conscious effort not to be connected to the rest of the world but it really made me happy when I saw this news.

But couple of things I just wanted to point out before this news becomes more stale and we remain as hyperconnected as ever – Twitter first time pointed out that they have a in-built search tool and more so, they even pointed out how to use it.

Now that makes more laugh as well as ponder why?

One reason is twitter is not as big as Facebook, so it has still a lot to cover in terms of world domination. Now it clear that twitter might make a shift from just microblogging or social networking platform to more ubiquitious realtime search which is the talk of the town amongst netizens.

The official twitter post says,

Every public update sent to Twitter from anywhere in the world 24/7 can be instantly indexed and made discoverable via our newly launched real-time search. What was that loud noise outside your apartment? Did you just feel an earthquake? What do people think about your company, your product, or your city? With this newly launched feature, Twitter has become something unexpectedly important—a discovery engine for finding out what is happening right now.

If you’ve read the last couple of lines, its quite evident that twitter is pointing us to use it more as a tool which lets others know what is happening around – use it as a water cooler, review or just realtime news. Now if you’re a avid twitter user, then all this is 2007 for sure but it makes perfect sense to those who have joined in as I recently read that 60% of newbies who join twitter leave it within a month. Not good – so twitter is hell bent to make every tweep count – and how to do; make it more relevant by inserting interestingness into it called realtime search along with frequently updates trending topics.

But all this fine, but I believe my money is worth where it mentions that What do people think about your company, your product, or your city? Now that’s where it makes sense for them to even monetize since it can very well bring a company/brand to consumers’ feet. Also it induces more engagement and starts a new era.

Also, all this while twitter has made it quite sure that consumers are still looking for simplicity – that’s why friendfeed is still trying find its foot into the water and facebook is feeling awry and jealous, if I can say so.

No, its not the Scobleizer nor was it the twitter account or their founders but it was one movie star who few months back wasn’t there on twitter in the first place. Now he can be called the “The Twitter Lord” if number of followers is a parameter to judge. So congrats from my side (smirk) and now my rant continues.

Blame it on twitter I guess since their suggested user list has already made its round of criticism from tech fraternity and even I too have my doubts whether its a good way to showcase the best twitter has for the newbies who are joining twitter in the first place. On the hindsight, its always true that superstars (and there aren’t dearth of it in Twitter) have a upper hand because of their stardom and its easy for them to have more number of followers than usual tweeps like us. But my rant is more about why the heck, then so much noise all about? BTW, thank God, its all end and MR. TWITTER himself will now donate some 10,000 odd bed nets to fight malaria in Africa (good for him).

Now act two, when the drama queen, Oprah Winfrey is already sitting on the pile of twitter followers of about 66,000+ even though she hasn’t wrote a single character. It was always true that Twitter has always been a platform for shameless promotion and we all have done our rounds but looking at stars throwing their guts out for follower counts makes me laugh, applause and wonder about being called as losers.

But one good thing will surely happen out of all this – TWITTER WILL FINALLY HIT MAINSTREAM. Other than that, I don’t know why so much hoopla!

Even more so, I don’t want to follow all these caricatures, partly because of my own notions:

1. Twitter is platform to connect & communicate. I bet that these superstars (now called Twitter-stars) won’t even connect since the price is skewed towards becoming a commodity.

2. When such hype happens, then startups like these often fumble or caught between how to progress as its always under the purview of media and people. More on it here

3. Who are all these so-called surprises arising from nowhere and getting the bait. Ashton Kutcher who has done nothing good other than marrying Demi Moore (not to mention about his second grade movies with 3rd grade acting skills).

So I would follow a normal so called tweep who has some value for me and whom I can provide some value. Infact, that has been my so called following policy on twitter. I hope those people who are following these stars have a reason!

Rant off!

Image credit: BoomTown

The article quoted as:

“Twitter has now reached a scale that most of the larger media companies — whether traditional or Internet media companies — are starting to think, ‘We need to have a Twitter strategy; All the people you’ve heard of and more are coming to Twitter saying, ‘We want to do something with you.’” – Fred Wilson, the Union Square Ventures partner who was an early investor in Twitter.

There I was and my #thoughexpress. Is twitter a media company or a tech startup? I’m sure in the fall of 2005 when they hatched the idea of starting this cool service and laid the first foundation in March 2006, they didn’t have the clue that this smallish small startup can be the internet’s next favorite darling. But as fate has it own course, now it is!

But lets beat it! Twitter has reached to a point where all sort of media and tech gurus are taking their pot shots about what are they gonna go with it? (Note: I’ve my own say on the same, may be in the next few posts).

But the big question in my mind is – how do you run a company like twitter? Do you run it like a Media company or a tech startup?

Question: Question to all startup enthusiasts – what do you do when a promising startup gets much needed traction in the market due to media but from the core its a tech startup?

But it all boils down to one point for us – marketers i.e. tangible return on investment (that’s why such a title). I agree that with the present set of metrics we work with in traditional companies, twitter can be a boring monostream from peer to peer but its within those intricately twisted and complicated conversation lie the pot of gold. Now the big question is who’s gonna make the hay in the sun? Also included my two cents – HOW?

Look at the graph below:

After all this, I was thinking about how another microblogging service, Friendfeed which yesterday got a facelift will do in such circumstances when twitter is on the mainstream path.