My use of Twitter has dropped significantly, practically to nothing. I enjoyed communicating with my friends and family, even though the topics centered on daily fluff. I could easily know what was going on in the world simply by check the latest tweets. I also gained some amount of pleasure from following totally random people. From news to humor, I was able to pick up a lot of useful information. One day that changed.

It was roughly a month ago when I woke up to find myself disheartened with the whole Twitter phenomenon. What was acting as a source of pleasure and enjoyment literally turned into a bother overnight. I don’t know exactly why. Gone was the intrigue of following random thoughts, the humor seemed to be less and less, and the overall useful information appeared to be diminishing.

My perception of twitter followed this evolution:

Novelty -> Communication Tool -> Information Intake Point -> Static and Noise -> Bother

Maybe this is the natural order of product development and delivery in a social networking, on demand, world. I don’t know. I feel, in many ways, Twitter lost me in the Information Intake stage. It was in this state when I felt the quality information I had once depended on twitter for was gone. Maybe this is due to the rapid growth the company is experiencing or maybe it is also due to the people I follow. All I know is the single to noise ratio became so great the service no longer provided a value for me.

I will still use Twitter; however, the usage will be on a limited basis. I am going to experiment with ways I can return to the communication tool/information intake point stages in hopes of removing the sensation of “wow, this is a bother” that I seem to have now because, as of right now, it feels like the love is gone.

Yesterday Twitter was hacked in a major way. If you do not follow one of the 33 people who happened to have their account hacked, or if you do not follow technology news, you may never have known it happened. Who happened to be the targets of the attack?  Celebrity Twitter Users.

Thanks to TechCrunch, we have screen shots of the hacks.

How did this happen? Twitter explains…

These accounts were compromised by an individual who hacked into some of the tools our support team uses to help people do things like edit the email address associated with their Twitter account when they can’t remember or get stuck. We considered this a very serious breach of security and immediately took the support tools offline. We’ll put them back only when they’re safe and secure. 

It almost sounds like a person successfully pulled of a SQL injection attack on tools intended to be used by Twitter employees.  What this shows is that the Twitter is not yet ready for the big time.  No matter what the attack was, Twitter has not taken steps to secure data within the organization. If they cannot secure the most basic of information, how can the service be trusted if they start offering pay services?

I wonder if the hacker actually could SEE the password information, or simply have the ability to change.

I’ve wondered how useful a Twitter search engine would actually be, and I would have to say (much to my surprise) it’s quite useful!  

Twithority ranks search results by highest ranking users first and by most recent tweets by the top 10,000 Twitter users. I ran a few test and found a number of things I wouldn’t have expected, nor ever would have thought of to search for in the first place.

Kinda sweet.

I haven’t been a concert goer in years, really.  Just not my thing any more.  Sure, I’ll go see a show if it’s a group I love (The Orb, Meat Beat Manifesto, Alabama 3) but I really don’t have a strong urge to see shows anymore simply for the sake of getting out. I’d like to think that it’s due to the fact that I am getting older, but the reality of the situation is that I simply don’t like dealing with the crowds and the commute to the venue.  

I digress.

If you do enjoy heading out to concerts, or if you simply want to keep up to date with the shows that may be coming to your area, check out the site called Sonicliving.  Here is how it works.  You create a show wishlist by adding your iTunes, Pandora or Last.fm favorites list, or simply create a list of artists you’d like to see live, and the site will inform you when shows matching your criteria become available.

Cool, no?  But how is this a social networking site?

Users of the service enter event information into the site, which is then communicated to the community and those who are interested in the group.  People have the ability to comment on the information or buy tickets.

This is a very interesting concept….kinda makes me wonder what I have been missing.

With news that Pownce, a social networking and micro-blogging service, was sold to Six Apart and will be shut down on December 15th, a number of individuals starting asking the age old question yet again – how will social networking make money?  Tack on Twitter turning down a $500 million dollar offer from Facebook and people started asking “Forget social networking in general, how will Twitter generate revenue?”

Speculation over potential revenue models has been out in the media for some time regarding the popular messaging service.  Give people a set number of tweets per day and charge after that, go after the enterprise market and sell a business service, and sell access to the Twitter API were all suggested as potential ways for the company to pull in money.

All along the company has remained silent, and now the CEO says the revenue is coming… but is being a tease about it.

“We will make money, and I can’t say exactly how because…we can’t predict how the businesses we’re in will work.” As he has before, he hinted at generating fees from sales-related Twitter content and from corporate users.

 

But as the conversation went on, one got the impression that Williams actually has a plan. He revealed that the company is in talks with large consumer packaged good companies, and whether that’s to sell the company internal services or to help the company monetize its own Twitter feeds, it’s promising.

Either the company has an idea as to what they will do, and they are attempting to protect their “trade secrets”, or they have no clue and Twitter is flying by the seat of its pants.  Knowing the history of start-ups, a number of people could easily say there is no real plan – I will bet differently.

Why?

Evan Williams, the CEO of Twitter, was a co-founder in the popular blogging service “Blogger”, who ended up selling his service to Google.  Obviously past performance does not guarantee future success, but he does have a track record I would bet on at this point.

For the social networking/micro blogger crowd I have a bit of news for you.  Pownce, the slimmed down version of Twitter, is shutting down as of 12/15/2008.  Is it going to be a big loss to the community?  I’m not sure.  While there was (is) a loyal user base I believe people will simply move to other services… that is if they don’t already use them.

What I find interesting is this note from the Pownce team: Goodbye Pownce, Hello Six Apart

We’re very happy that Six Apart wants to invest in growing the vision that we the founders of Pownce believe so strongly in and we’re very excited to take our vision to all of Six Apart’s products. Mike and I have joined Six Apart as part of their engineering team and we’re looking forward to being a part of the talented group that has created amazing tools for blogging and publishing.

If I read between the lines, the acquisition of Pownce is solely to integrate Pownce technology into Six Apart products and not for the user base the service has created. Does that mean communication tools such as Pownce (or Twitter) really have no true means of converting usage into revenue?

If that is the case, what does this say about the future of other social networking tools?  

As TechCrunch points out Twitter was eating Pownce’s lunch.  It is also good to hear users will be able “to export their accounts to other services, allowing them to retain their messages and media”

TechCrunch is pointing out how Twitter and Flickr are provided first hand accounts of the terrorist attacks that took place in Mumbai, India.  Yes, there is a quick screen shot of comments and a picture taken by someone who was a witness to the attacks.

While I have no doubt a high portion of the information that was flowing on the Twitter network was incorrect at the time, it seems that some tweets provided were much more accurate than what CNN was providing for their viewers.

It’s very unfortunate that such a tragic event points out how effective social networking tools are. This is what the internet is about.