Cullmann Design Blog

The O’Reilly Ignite series is a rapid-fire presentation format that challenges an orator to expound on a subject in 5 minutes or less using slides that auto-advance at a set interval. In this case, Veronica Belmont explains the Ins and outs of what a meme is and how marketers can make use of these virally spread nuggets.

Access the video directly.

Fallon, a Minnesota based design firm released their Social Media AIR application, Skimmer. This lightweight-app allows you to view, post and search through your Twitter , Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and Blogger content and feeds. Using Adobe AIR, the installation is easy and takes only a few moments. The application itself is elegant and aesthetically minimal. It’s ability to organize and fine-tune content makes it a very easy to view copious amounts of content from your social media services. Fallon’s focus on design is evident in the application’s construction and user interface. It’s easy to spend hours (…and days…) behind Skimmer’s screens.

Skimmer can be downloaded at http://www.fallon.com/skimmer and can run on any windows or mac running AIR.

As mentioned in my Predictions post, I think Twitter is going to break into the mainstream this year. I also think that Twitter’s appeal will grow with a boon in popularity. This growth is going to require a change in Twitter itself. To me, the attraction to Twitter is the community that you create by who you choose to follow. Although you may follow many, you can control the stream and it’s contents with a variety of choices. Unfortunately, methods to control and organize your stream require using third-party solutions. All of this aside, I think that Twitter represents an embrace of a new communication paradigm.

The biggest challenge Twitter has to face (and it’s faced scaling and adaptation difficulties since it’s launch) a lack of a business model. This effects users in two ways: An insurance that the community that the users are investing their time into will last and that those posters who generate traffic and users have some method to convert their effort into compensation. The second point is not a large issue as most users post for their own pleasure. The first point is an issue, one that I think will be answered this year.

Twitter reinvented as a commercial entity will come in one of 2 forms:

1. A subscription based model:
   Whether this is based on frequency of usage or the number of users you follow, a subscription model will arise. I think this is a possible option despite Twitter being rooted in a “free” model of subscription. I believe that a pro-level account option will arise, similar to the Flickr model. This will result in two-tiers of user with the pro-level user being able to have unlimited posts, followers and perhaps the metrics on click-throughs directly through the Twitter API.
2. An advertising based model:
   Much more likely, Twitter will offer their stream, or a portion of their stream to advertising to subsidize growth. This can be positioned as a non-intrusive targeted advertising campaign with messages inserted into the stream based on context or user profile. I am not sure how Twitter users will respond to this, currently the user group is very media savvy and sensitive to intrusions, no matter how well handled, into their community.

As a Twitter user who consumes much more than contributes, I find Twitter’s most useful features is in immediate, from-the-gut responses to news and current events. Whether those events are changes in browser compatibility, sports scores or breaking world news. It’s a consumable for me and I think that many people will use it in the same way. I don’t think that it’s limited to a Read-Write model.

If Twitter is to really flourish, it will require the ability to both thread conversations and also create a time-line for categories and events. Threading conversations will allow a real dialogue between users (regardless of timing). Time lines (for subjects) will have users easily communicating concepts and themes relative to one another. The combination of the two will equal the power of a good e-mail client. You will be able to parse the trivial from the important, the old and the. Combine this with sorting tweets by user and you have a multi-media sorting tool that is unrivaled.

Until Twitter adds new features, man ambitious developers have created or contributed to some of the great Twitter API projects below:

TWITTER CLIENTS

TwitterDeck Twitter Client
Twirl Twitter Client
Twitterific Twitter Client (OS X Only)
WittyTwitter Twitter Client (Windows Only)