The Ecology of Twitter

What’s the cost (i.e. time) of following someone on Twitter? What is their “grade” and just how popular are they and how many people have blocked them or not followed them and well, who cares? Is it relevant at all? More than anything, these questions may point to some growing trends in Social Media usage and services. The ecology that Twitter has spurned begs some interesting questions and sparks some thoughts on the evolution of Social Media.

Why do we need to understand this evolution? Because understanding the evolving Social Web is critical to understanding global economic shifts, consumer spending and saving and political changes. The Social Web is the enabling technology  that will have an impact on our society even greater than the first Social Media tool – the printing press; which lead to the Christian Reformation. I point out Twitter simply as a reference point, and this topic could go very long and very deep.

Taking a look at what one might call Twitology (or spin-off apps leveraging Twitter that form a transaction economy of information) we can see that Twitter, the service  pundits only a year ago pondered it’s worth on, has now grown an ecology just like the iPod, only in the Social Web, with no apparent monetization plan. So what is the ecology of Twitter?

Without compiling a whole list (some of which can be found here) in this entry, suffice to say we’ve counted over 30 different spin-off applications that feed off of Twitter. Other microblogs like Plurk and Identi.ca have not seen this kind of uptake spin-off. Clearly Twitter has become a phenomenon. Services range from seeing your own and others ranking, feeds to Smart Phones, tracking topics, graphing trends and sentiment ranking. Whole conversations take place with Twitterers using the “#” sign followed by a letter/number sequence which can be followed in real-time or later.

We see this as an indicator of how we’re still learning a new set of communication skills. We marvel at the stories of Twitter on saving lives or as a terrorist tool and a social safety net. These are all small and early indicators that Twitter and similar tools are playing a role in an evolving style of community the world hasn’t quite seen before. So it’s not the technology – that is just an enabler – it’s how we’re using that technology in our daily lives and how services like Twitter will hekp us shift how we organize and foment change locally, regionally and globally.

How do you think Twitter will evolve?

(Author: G. Crouch, Managing Partner)