What's Happening? Who cares!

Until recently Twitter prompted us with a question "What are You Doing?", which is personal and so common that it automatically challenges a reader into reaction. This question has been replaced now with a more distant phrase "What's Happening?", which is less personal. It also does not draw as much attention as the first question did.

Why?

Because it is not about me - the average user and because I do not care what is happening, unless it is happening to me.

It is true on the other hand that Twitter has grown a lot since its beginning. It has been used for many different purposes from personal status updates to all kinds of marketing and social networking. Looking from this perspective, the old question looks a bit narrow, but I think the authors could have come up with a better question.

Let me give some suggestions what would work better and still be aligned with today's multipurpose social hub that Twitter certainly is.

What is Happening to You?
What do You Have to Say?
What would You Like to Share?

These questions are focused on the user. They show interest in the user's opinion and they want to hear his/her particular statement. Questions like these are much more likely to generate (enthusiastic) response than the new official question.

What do You think about this article?

We have not seen a real video Twitter yet!

You are probably aware of the popular micro blogging service Twitter. It differs fundamentally from other blogging services, because it shifts focus from individual posts to a stream of micro posts. Instead of well constructed, essay-like posts it captures tiny pieces of information, which are collected over time by each individual. It is functionally similar to a TV station. Each user is a broadcaster, who broadcasts his own micro packets of information. The reason for extreme popularity of Twitter is in its alignment with a modern lifestyle. Most users today find it hard to take time to write long stories, but a lot of them are willing to dedicate micro time gaps of their available time to post micro blogs.

With Twitter, each user is a broadcaster, who streams his own stream of information which can be regarded as a channel in TV analogy. There is one big difference to a TV channel though. Twitter channels are text based, whereas TV channels are video based. There is an obvious question, which poses itself "Can Twitter be upgraded to support video broadcasts?"

There are some services, which are already offering, what is believed to be a video version of Twitter 12seconds.tv, seesmic.com and phreadz.com. I believe this not to be true. These services are offering an alternative of Twitter, which supports video the same way Twitter supports text. Instead of focusing on the user experience, these services focus on upgrading Twitter. I am not saying that these services are not useful. On the contrary, each of them offers an interesting service and already hosts several users. What I am saying is that these services are not providing the service in video domain which is analog to Twitter in text domain. What would be a real video Twitter service then?

Let us take TV analogy again and let us look at TV service from a user's perspective. A TV channel is a constant stream of video content. It is live, always present and broadcasted to a wide audience. Twitter is providing such a service for a text based content. It even extends the TV paradigm by including each individual as a broadcaster. On one hand each user is streaming out his own text stream and on the other hand he is receiving a mash of streams, which he is subscribed to. A real video Twitter should do just that for video content. This means each user should stream out his own video channel - a real, live channel, not a list of text posts with video attachments! The content in these outbound streams would be quite sparse over time. The inbound channel of each user would be a time mash of channels he is subscribed to. In case there would be more than one post at a time to the inbound channel, the content would be queued and streamed out sequentially. The final result in user experience should be the user being able to tune into his inbound channel, sit back, relax and enjoy personalized video content.

I firmly believe that this will be the big next thing in the domain of social media. Entrepreneurs, if you are looking for a new business opportunity, please contact me, I am open for further discussion on this topic.