The challenges of Twittering Steve Jobs

ZDNet's Larry Dignan (not Dan Farber) has an interesting piece on the problems micro bloggers had using Twitter while Steve Jobs was delivering his keynote yesterday. It's the challenge of scale that inevitable confronts a technology that becomes something it was not originally intended to be.

This is not new. Since I arrived in Silicon Vallety, I have heard similar stories from the developer's of some of our finest products. I remember Bill Joy, at Sun Microsystems, when that company had 12 employees, telling me the story of the Sun 50. "We built these things because we were unhappy with what was out there and we thought they would be cool. So then we thought we'd share them with a few of our friends, who in turn ..."

It's funny but viral and word of mouth are considered marketing terms. In fact, it's what happens when geeks find a good thing. Twitter was an internal way to communicate. It's roots were in another company that fell in love with a little hack that made SMS more portable. Word of mouth made it popular.  Now, it's starting to go viral.

Will it scale. My guess is yes.  Entrepreneurs are usually good at solving technology problems. My bigger concern remains: How will it monetize without pissing off a growing userbase? Entrepreneurs are not always as adept at solving business problems.

BTW, I figured out how I attributed my Gizmodo post to Farber when it was Dignan. On Google Reader, I see Dan Farber's name, not not Larry Dignan's. In the old days, I used to blame Microsoft. Can I now blame my best recent goof on Google?

Comments

[Andrew Wright (@batterista)]

I'm concerned that there are deeper architectural issues with Twitter, as they are continually running into downtime issues. They'll get it together, but it's probably a full re-architecture job.

I still think that there are business and public service uses for Twitter that can generate revenue without going the advertising route. With Pounce and others out there, and the fact that Twitter is so easy to clone, the moment advertising hits, a mass migration could ensue. And Twitter would be the viral marketing vehicle leading the exodus from Twitter.