Twitter becomes... useful?

It's amazing the ways in which Twitter is being used. What started out as a micro-blogging service for narcissists, is now providing real-time news, organizing people, and insight into the lives of people like Lance Armstrong and Shaq, and people who are next door neighbors but more fascinating that we had imagined.

Over the weekend, a terrifying plane accident in Denver occurred, where a Continental plane slid off the runway at Denver International Airport. How did I hear about it? Was it the local newspaper or television station? No, it was spreading like wildfire on Twitter.

Boulder software engineer Mike Wilson was on the plane, and started twittering what was going on immediately after he escaped the burning wreckage. With the telephone lines overloaded, it provided him contact with friends and family and let them know he was okay. Additionally, it allowed people in Denver to see what was going in a faster and more personal way than the local television stations could offer.

During the attacks in Mumbai, the twitter tag #mumbai providing an amazing real-time look from people on the ground. Everything from the worldwide reaction and sympathy, to the first-hand experiences of those who were experiencing the event first hand. It personalized the news from thousands of miles away, in a way that even TV news couldn't.

I've even used twitter to organize local twitter meetups for networking and meeting other people locally. Some people use it to organize political protests, charity events, news feeds, and more.

Twitter has become a platform without rules, and is therefore a very interesting product development case study.

Since it was never really defined as how to use Twitter, people have used it how they have seen fit to suit their needs. As a result, Twitter has become a popular and useful platform.

The question still remains as to whether Twitter can monitize their business model, but they are on the right track. They have allowed the users to define the product, provided the tools for them to be successful, and then will develop revenue models around the way Twitter is actually being leveraged by users, not on how they think users should utilize Twitter. It's an interesting business case without much precedent.

If you haven't checked out Twitter yet, I encourage you to do so. Because it has no set rules, it can often seem trivial, useless, and difficult to approach for first time users.

I'll be blogging in the coming weeks about successful ways to use twitter depending on your goals. Whether you want to organize friends to do fun stuff, or if you are interested in breaking news, industry knowledge, or a million other avenues, there is a way to use Twitter that is useful for you.