Brian Moreau - Technology Entrepreneur

It describes itself as “a free social messaging utility for staying connected in real-time”.
Lets extract and analyse the key words in this sentence, “free”, “social messaging”, “utility” describe what it is and “staying connected in real-time” is what it claims it allows you to do.

In more detail…

“FREE”
Well nobody wants to pay for anything on the internet however how many sites have we joined which state “free to join” only to find additional services will cost you a subscription? I will update this as I determine if any hidden charges become apparent and also look into how it makes money if it is really free.

“Social Messaging”
We have all heard the term “social networking” but what is social messaging?
I will update this when I learn what the difference is between networking and messaging.

“Utility”
You can click but not flush.

“Staying connected in real-time”
As I maintain is that not what mobile phones were designed for?

Ok in practice you create a basic profile, name, add your website link (very useful see below), a short bio (oddly 160 characters in length assumed limited to SMS length) you can also personalise your profile with a theme and upload an image.
You can register your mobile phone which apparently makes it more fun!

When joining you can also elect to have it send all you messenger contacts or so called friends an invite to join you on twitter, if you don’t have any friends you can search for other members on twitter and here comes the interesting bit when and if you find anyone remotely interesting you can elect to “follow” them.

Viewing a profile will display how many followers that member has and how many members that member is following! I’d describe this more as stalking. You can also click the followers and following for that list of members and follow any of them!
You know it makes sense.

So what do you use it for?
Well the description “staying connected in real-time” I feel is somewhat misleading, you can’t actually connect to anyone you simply update your status from time to time and others can then check on your status to see what you’re doing.
Right ok I’m baffled this single function is a feature of Facebook although Facebook has many more, the same function can also be utilised on the many messengers so what is all the hype about? Am I missing something here?

Updating
I was unable to actually find out how to update my status and shortly after becoming very bored I decided to upload an image only to receive the following error..

And oddly after that I was invited to update my status!

Looking at other members statuses I notice not many updates were very recent, most had joined posed an update or two and left a year ago, obviously I was not the only one who is going to find twittering a very short lived experience but having said that some people have 1000’s of updates and 1000’s of followers, who were these people? Not that I follow celebrities I wondered was anybody famous twittering?

I tried a search on Google for “famous people on twitter” and it appears I was not the first to ask and I was also not the first to wonder what the point of twitter is either then it dawned on me, it has no point which is what makes it so talked about.

It has become a subject in its own right, even I am writing about it, people study it, produce statistics on it and twitter on all day about it, it becomes marmite, either you love it or hate it.

This is the key, all this twittering gets noticed, particularly by the search engines so we can immediately recognise business can use it to give us information on say new product launches, and now it has a serious use it becomes more interesting.

That said I have never had a search engine return a twitter page for any of the searches I have ever made so I guess the key is to get followers.

Well businesses or websites can already offer news and information in the form of RSS feeds or by email to subscribers so dose twittering have any advantages over RSS or email.

The short answer is YES, well it certainly is better than email because it is indexed by search engines and thus can be read by anybody without subscription and more importantly your business or website news twitters provide your site with the all important back-links.

POST
I had to stop the video through annoyance and boredom quicker than I became bored of twitter itself!

TWITTER
I followed Julia Allison because Google returned her name in the famous people search however her twitters don’t appear to be hers.

FIN
It’s odd the more I twitter on about it the more I am becoming excited about it, it’s simplicity in essence and yet is packed with exciting opportunities.
Blogs complete with fan clubs, downloads for any device you care to mention including mobile phones, API’s and more, I can hardly contain my excitement.

To be continued…

follow brianmoreau at http://twitter.com

The future of social networking. The times online discusses the future of social networking and mobile phones my comments were as follows.
I agree social networking can be fun it also has serious uses for business. The thing is there are so many social communities of one form or another all competing with each other such as the new UK mobile social network SMS BUBBLE which has just launched but unless your all in the same network or bubble your not going to make contact! Ideally what we need is a system that allows us to make contact with anyone anywhere whatever their network status, was that not the idea of mobile phones? The full article can be found here. http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3897340.ece
Should we have 100% faith in the machines? We are told how wonderful and advantageous technology is in our lives and evolve to trust in it and we often dismiss logic in favour of the results that computers give us. This faith can lead to trouble as this example explains. Mistaken Identity a click away. I was wrongly arrested and accused of being someone else. Apparently another prisoner being held at the police station at the same time had his fingerprints entered onto my file. The police have admitted this mistake happened simply by selecting the wrong name on a computer. More worryingly the police admit this is an easy mistake to make. Note it could have been the other persons DNA entered on to my file. My concern is some people are jailed for life with no parole for serious crimes where the sole evidence is by fingerprints or DNA alone, many of these have always protested their innocence and may well be yet there is no hope for them due to the fact that the police state the fingerprint machine or DNA records can never be wrong however simple human error can cause these mistakes to happen yet it is dismissed as considered unlikely. This was so in the case of Colin Stag and Barry George who were convicted on minute DNA evidence of which the jury have no skill to dispute or reason
Google Street View
While enjoying a late Sunday afternoon beer in http://www.nanobytebar.com/ bar, Soho London I was experimenting with my new Olympus E510 DSLR camera attempting to capture the lighting effect created by the tall windows. I also managed to capture the wonderfully clear reflection in a window of the buildings opposite when all of a sudden I spot something unusual. The official name is “Google Street View” and was launched mid 2007 the vehicles take 360 panoramic views which can be viewed on “Google Maps”. The “Google Map” site can be found at http://maps.google.co.uk	It was not till it moved on past I noticed what it was, it was the Google Cam capturing images of streets for their new Google mapping application so I quickly got outside where I could take a couple of rare shots of this iconic and controversial object.

	You will need to zoom in and select “Photos” from the “More” options menu and you will then see some photos that have been added to the map but oddly I was unable to find any of the panoramic view images but there is a link to http://www.panoramio.com/ which appears to be the Google official map community that you are able to join and upload your own pictures of streets and buildings you visit anywhere in the world.
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