In the last few days at my previous job when tasks have been handed over, I had some spare time on hand and I started to tweet on twitter via my iPhone. I downloaded a number of free twitter apps such as Twitterrific, TwitBird, and a few others including Echofon. In the end, I find myself using Echofon apps more and more simply because of one great built-in search function they have. Over a few intense days I managed to read what other folks are tweeting around my vicinity ranging from 1km to as far as 100km. Not only was it fun, it was also revelational!
Go see what others are tweeting about using this search function on Twitter. In case you are still clueless about Twitter, it’s essentially a mobile apps meant for folks to mass-send their text messages or SMSes to the cyberspace. The text is even shorter than what’s allowed on SMS, 140 characters max.
You can follow someone on Twitter and receive all their texts on your mobile apps. Over the last 6 months or so, I managed to garnered approximately 70 followers, 90% of whom I don’t know and I find myself following close to 60 people. Fun it sure was, business application-wise I do see some potential there.
Never mind how Twitter will ultimately fund its survival, unless humans cease to absorb information via reading, Twitter will be around for a long while more and probably thrive to beat Google in some aspects of search that Google is still incapable of doing well.
This is what I have learnt about Twitter; almost 80% of singaporean twitting are probably below 25 with the other 20% made up of folks like my age group twitting more about business related or hobby related matters. I don’t remember seeing more expletives on other media than Twitter, youth has much angst to vent. If you retweet someone’s tweet, you would generally get a thank you note from them. Almost 60% of people who tweet owns a blog or website, most popular platforms I have seen are blogger, wordpress, tumblr, and livejournal.
Better not forget to mention a few established businesses that are on Twitter with quite a number of followers, in the range of hundreds if not thousands. Go to twellow, a twitter directory, you will find almost 17k twitter account holders are from Singapore with one chap having close to 100k followers. I find myself following the tweets of Resort World, VW, Tung Lok and JobsDB to mention a few just to find out how they are using Twitter to market their products.
Anyway, I am very certain Twitter will evolve into a very powerful marketing and news reporting tool as it gets more traction. I can imagine a future where people tune into Twitter to get a live update on just about anything; events or incidents. It will take press freedom to a whole new level too. Anyway, there is so much more and if you want more thoughts from me, don’t forget to follow me at @sheiwah. I may or may not follow you though. 
