Social Networking Gone Mad
No more whispering if everything you can say is transmitted around the world. Is social networking jumping the shark?
I just implemented a thing-a-ma-jig called Tweetboard (left). It’s a kind of forum, but each post appears publicly – via Twitter. Normally when you post to a forum, only other members of the forum can read your post. In this weird forum thingo, Twitter posts are brought together forum-style. Anybody can read the conversations you’re having, but only Twitter people can post.
It’s all a bit mad if you ask me and also very experimental. What’s more, is it all a bit too much?
Twitter has an open API which means that developers can basically implement and modify people’s tweets and turn them into … whatever they want. But Twitter isn’t what bothers me. Later this year, Google are releasing Google Wave and they’ve put a LOT of money into its development. In fact, you could say, they’ve bet the farm. Wave is like a great, big, Twitter on steroids with everything interconnected. Email, Google Docs (Google’s answer to MS Office), online storage – you name it.
I’m not sure of any of this, but let’s see how we go. With all these plug-ins, I fear this site is taking too long to load.
“See me after class, Twitter!”
