Comments on: Social Atoms and the Twitter Ecosystem

By: Twitter’s One Real Problem. No Not Developers!

Twitter’s One Real Problem. No Not Developers! — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 04:04:51 +0000

[...] Phase Two: Twitter, when it released an API, became a platform that in turn spawned hundreds of applications that used the API, which led to several millions of dollars being invested in Twitter ecosystem, betting that Twitter would eventually become the platform of the new social web. (Read: Social Atoms and the Twitter Ecosystem) [...]

By: As It Turns Three, What Is Twitter To You?

As It Turns Three, What Is Twitter To You? — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 19:15:44 +0000

[...] Facebook change its game. It has inspired many books, blogs and a slew of startups that are betting their future on Twitter, the platform. In these depressing times, it is one of the handful of consumer web services people want to write [...]

By: weekly (weekly) | The Web2Marketer

weekly (weekly) | The Web2Marketer — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:01:25 +0000

[...] Social Atoms and the Twitter Ecosystem [...]

By: On Trading and Twitter, the Exchange of Ideas | EcoSilly

On Trading and Twitter, the Exchange of Ideas | EcoSilly — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:02:00 +0000

[...] Social Atoms and the Twitter Ecosystem (gigaom.com) [...]

By: WebWorkerDaily » Archive Track Your Daily Goals With Twitter «

WebWorkerDaily » Archive Track Your Daily Goals With Twitter « — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 23:31:47 +0000

[...] TrackDailyGoals is just the latest example of how people are using Twitter for more than just chit-chat, and how its inherent functionality is being used to build even more interesting applications around it. [...]

By: Geoff Jones » Stephen Fry goes nuclear.

Geoff Jones » Stephen Fry goes nuclear. — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 23:06:52 +0000

[...] to Gigaom for the [...]

By: The NOW Web From An Even Higher Place | The Other Bloke's Blog

The NOW Web From An Even Higher Place | The Other Bloke's Blog — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:43:32 +0000

[...] it happens, within minutes I was reading another mind-boggling post by Mathew Ingram on Social Atoms and the Twitter Ecosystem. It was almost like one of those zooming-in shots where you get to see the ultra-microscopic [...]

By: Morning Edition - Feb 18, 2009 « Sazbean

Morning Edition - Feb 18, 2009 « Sazbean — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:03:18 +0000

[...] Social Atoms and the Twitter Ecosystem (GigaOM) [...]

By: Jhangora

Jhangora — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:54:45 +0000

Twitter is going to overtake Facebook, maybe in a few years. Twitdon is a great place to find out apps related to Twitter.

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 22:50:55 +0000

@Sujay — thanks for the link, although Om didn’t write the post (I did). And @Todd, that’s an excellent point — I actually thought about quarks and other quantum-level phenomena while I was writing the post (muons, etc.) but then I thought I was getting a little too elaborate :-) But your point is a good one.

By: Scott

Scott — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:28:54 +0000

Sounds a bit like the Palm Pilot. I remember finding out how a bigger, more complex version of it was released prior and bombed, but the slimmed down, simple version was a hit. I think there are two things that make Twitter great in that respect:

1. Initially, it only does one thing, and that’s its core service. There’s nothing else to learn, nothing else to distract you (not even ads), making it easy to learn and use.
2. The ability to add a bunch of custom tools and features, but with a very simple core, gives it special functionality. You get the specific bells and whistles you want without changing the experience for anyone else. By letting the user community add the extra features, they never have to worry about breaking the core and they never have to figure out what the core is, yet the users can still get the extras they want.

By: 090217 Current Links | johnsumser.com: Recruiting News and Views

090217 Current Links | johnsumser.com: Recruiting News and Views — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:24:33 +0000

[...] Social Atoms and the Twitter EcosystemIs Twitter’s low rent approach to application development the key to ecosystem growth? [...]

By: Todd

Todd — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 08:04:04 +0000

I would respectfully disagree that a tweet is the “smallest possible unit of online interaction”. Well represented within the 140 characters are activity stream verbs, multiple subjects ( represented by shortened URLs ), multiple actors ( @username ), old school emoticons, lolspeak, acronyms and hash tags.

You should consider each to be “quarks” of online interaction.

P.S. “yes” quarks can be broken down to even smaller parts!

By: Learning to Fly « PReally?

Learning to Fly « PReally? — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 06:58:27 +0000

[...] Matthew Ingram put it, Twitter stripped away all the excess and distractions on many other social networks and [...]

By: Cataract Moon

Cataract Moon — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 06:00:42 +0000

I like the entire “open source” approach to Twitter. To keep people using its zen-reduced socialization model, they must keep it free to users, but I can see Twitter offering contained accounts for corporations. Basically, a corporation uses twitter internally between each other–the employees–and possibly extend it to the consumer. It could work in both directions actually depending on the corporation’s purpose. Personally, I would like to have our institution (community college) establish TWITTER as a method of communicating with students, and I can see us paying a small yearly fee to maintain such a model hosted by TWITTER and not on our own server. However, Twitter would need a customer-service approach model, which calls for mighty organization! Finally, I do not want to see Twitter bombarded with google, yahoo, or microsoft advertisements!

By: Sujay

Sujay — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 04:54:49 +0000

Hi Om,

Great post. Something similar happened to me, where I was wondering why would someone use Twitter where we had WALLS (Facebook) and Scraps (Orkut)

I have listed some dream Twitter apps (might have already out there), which I would love to use. Check it out.
http://www.blog.ideasrule.com/2009/02/is-twitter-the-only-idea-around-microblogging/