So Twitter is all the rage at SXSW and I have to say, after being totally bored with it up until I got here, I've been Twittering like a fiend.
And, because of the SXSW buzz, I'm sure some VC who has never used it will want to throw 10 million dollars at it.
So I get it now, and I think it can be great, but I can also see going back home from SXSW and never using it again. So, basically, it's too early to tell, but here are 5 arguments on both sides.
Twitter rocks because...
- Most importantly, it provides others access to me that I control. Facebook demonstrated the importance of this over its Newsfeed blowup. Privacy is huge. I'm happy to give someone my Twitter name, because I can choose to stop getting their texts, and frankly, I don't much care if they still get mine. I control their affect on my SMS inbox, which I wouldn't if I was giving away my phone number for texting. Plus, allowing them to text me shouldn't allow them to call me... that's just braindead simple.
- Twitter is to UPOC as del.icio.us is to Third Voice. There was a great article written by the creator of Third Voice that talked about how seemingly small architecture changes, like foldering vs tagging, and defaulting to public vs private, made a huge impact on the ultimate fate of Third Voice and del.icio.us. I look at Twitter the same way. There's already a group SMSing service out there