What I Learned at 140 | The Twitter Conference (part 1)

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Well I survived day one of the Twitter Conference (#140tc) at the Computer History Museum in Mtn View.  Some of many highlights:

• 90%+ of the attendees pounding laptops furiously while speakers did their thing – a site for geek eyes
• Seeing my first “webeletrity” (@ijustine) in person – now @GuyKawasaki has been relegated to some 50-year-old Hawaiian I happen to play pick-up ice hockey with
• Witnessing @Scobleizer live – he’s taller but just as friendly and noteworthy as I imagined – I’m not sure why people are so obsessed with the size of his camera lens though
• Meeting many cool and interesting people in person
• Noting the irony of the first Twitter Conference in a building that used to be SGI and is now the Computer History Museum

I think I’ll go back for day two.

One of the day one highlights came early:  Alex Payne (@al3x), Twitter API lead was up first.

He noted how Jack Dorsey (@jack) truly recognized the power of “presence” in IM buddy lists and extended it into Twitter.  Interesting for me as an ex-AOLer to see how it took someone who wasn’t super close to the ICQ/AIM franchise (as far as I know) could see the opportunity and extend the seed of this idea into a new form.

I loved hearing Alex share how minimalism is a guiding design principle at Twitter.  Twitter looks remarkably similar today as Jan 2007. 

Twitter UI 01/2007

Alex is in a unique position to see what’s coming as he is actively working with external organizations that are developing applications on Twitter’s API’s.  Some of the things he sees coming:

• Increasingly news organizations are relying on twitter – before the story “breaks” (research, checking sources); during the story’s “broadcast” (live reporting – example of New York Time’s visualization of tweets for Steelers or Cardinals during Super Bowl); and after (conversation continues).
• It is too hard for Twitter itself to provide a nuanced view of mass of data – it needs specialists in news, sports, entertainment, finance (e.g. stocktwits)
• He noted other exceptional applications build around Twitter:  inserting a social dimension into charitable giving with tipjoy; sharing images with others via Twitter with yfrog and TwitPics.

One of the potentially biggest ideas he mentioned was that of a “portable identity.”  The major portals – AOL, Google, MSN and Yahoo! all have many years of efforts in building up their own user identity credentials that, in theory, travel around the Internet with a user unlocking a myriad of services as they go.  Facebook surely belongs with these firms as well now.  In the end, I’ve (perhaps cynically) viewed these efforts as self-serving.  The more one vendor is successful, the more they lock out their arch-rivals.  Without setting out to do so, Twitter may be actually be in a position to deliver some notion of truly portable identity.  Proof?  Well 10,000 applications built with their API’s to date is some evidence of momentum.

I’m sleepy . . . more later.

1. The Power of Presence. Insights from Alex Payne, Twitter API Lead.
2. I am a Twitter God(ess) and So Can You! The View From Twitter Stardom with @ijustine, @missrogue and @davepeck.
3. Don’t Take the Drive to Manic Feature Explosion. What Makes a Good Twitter App.
4. Twitter business start-ups are combination socialist and radical markets.   Twitter Strategies:  Real-World Success Stories.
5. WTF, No Twitter TV!? Direction from Anamitra Banerji, Twitter Product Management.
6. Even with a simple hash tag, there is a learning curve.   Soren MacBeth, Co-Founder / CEO of StockTwits.
7. You can’t own social media. You can only interact with it. Corporate Use of Twitter by @JetBlue.
8. Twitter will transform conferences & events. Surprising takeaways from an in-person Twitter conference experience.