
Amazon Comes to Twitter - dawie
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/amazon_comes_to_twitter.php
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iamwil
I'm kind of amazed, as are other people in the naysayer category have been,
that Twitter had taken off as it has. At its basic form, it's just passing
back and forth messages, a problem seemingly solved by email decades ago.
However, twitter obvious is not a question of the underlying technology, but
rather, how it is presented to and used by people. It's gotten people use to
the idea of instant self-expression, no matter how inane--for better or worse.
I would have chalked it up for sensors to monitor and log ourselves, but
twitter demonstrated that people will report or say anything if there's an
audience. Perhaps trolls have already paved the way in this regard.

That said, I think it's easy to write Twitter off as a fad, since the world's
largest collection of quips doesn't quite seem to make the world a better
place. My guess is that there's probably value in Twitter, but only when it's
married with other sorts of data or text processing. Just off the top of my
head, geospatial data and emotion detection algorithm on twitter data could
generate a heat map of how people are feeling place to place, or time to time.
I imagine advertisers would find this information valuable, since they can set
up targeted advertising when people are statistically most vulnerable to
impulse buying at a certain time or place.

If twitter can manage an API or platform to support this sort of thing,
they'll be around for a while, I think. If not, well, at least we'd have the
largest collection of quips for the archaeologists of the 22nd century.

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Tichy
OK, interesting, buuuuut... How much shopping news will customers endure on
their cell phones? Why not just sign up for the bargain feeds in your old and
trusted RSS Reader? I am just not sure that there is a huge business
opportunity lurking around the corner. Except for one thing: targeting Twitter
users, they might be a special bunch who can't resist to buy everything that
is pushed at them...

~~~
dawie
One Contextual relevant advert per day might be ok though...

