What I see is a Valley that’s somewhat oblivious to what it can actually do to change the world. Whether that be the startups that it could support or the entrepreneurs it could put forth as success stories, I really just don’t see enough people who actually are given enough credit for doing it in a way that doesn’t look like an Amazon or a Google. And yes, Amazon, Google, Zappos, Twitter etc. all changed the daily lives of people all over the world TREMENDOUSLY. But so have Ushahidi, FrontlineSMS, Open Data Kit and Samasource etc. It’s not a question of who’s changing the world more, it’s who’s world is being changed and how.

So now I can call up companies that don’t even sell pizza, order a pizza, and they’ll still deliver it to me. Great. (Editor’s note: really happened.)

But when it comes to offering people who’ve never in their lives had any sort of income, jobs via mobile devices, it barely registers.

Secondly, most companies that end up changing the world do it by accident. I’m sure when Twitter was invented, Jack Dorsey and company had no idea a young Ugandan would use it to microblog his way through a riot, bullets whizzing past, and tanks rolling in. Likewise, I really doubt Sergey and Larry dreamed of all the things Google would one day be used for. Nor, probably, did Tim Berners-Lee when he laid the groundwork for the web.

Finally, I’m not sure Silicon Valley needs to worry about changing the world. They’ve done such a good job of doing it without actually trying that change will inevitably come. With so many brilliant, successful people in such a small area, they can afford to not even think about it. Saying ‘we are here to change the world’ while not really supporting the claim comes across as a bit shallow if you ask me. If you want to really do that, great. But if you’re there to pocket a few million before you hit thirty, nothing wrong with that either.

The motivation of people around the globe looking for innovative solutions to the worlds biggest problems (or smallest), should be to create the same energy, enthusiasm and optimism that exists for whatever reason in Silicon Valley, wherever they are in the world. Whether that be Namibia, Bangalore or Lost Springs, Wyoming.

Now that Twitter has purchased Summize and corrected some seriously boneheaded moves, their next major moves need to be in the mobile space.  VentureBeat makes some interesting points on this very subject. If I were the powers that be at Twitter I would be looking to snatch up all of the best thirdparty applications using the API.  This would Include Hahlo and Tweetdeck, or possibly Twitterific (which has the feature-set of both).  Rather than spend more money and time trying to compete with these existing products, why not bring them into the fold? In addition, they need to take a hard look at the functionality provided by TwitterFeeder.  I use TwitterFeeder to announce that I’ve updated my blogs.  Without it, I have to do this manually. 

I’m not suggesting TwitterFeeder in and of itself is worthy of acquisition (the staff at Twitter could write this code in a heartbeat) but the functionality would be useful to Twitter users. It would also allow them to compete more directly with FriendFeed and Tumblr.

I had to share this, it’s from a conference a friend of mine attended. She shared the slides with me and for some reason I found this especially hilarious. It’s a timeline showing how social media measures up against the history of civilization. Click the image to see it larger.

This article discusses some interesting revenue model ideas for the Twitter team. In Ten Ways Twitter Could Appeal to Joe Average I touch upon ways that Twitter or it’s developers could bring ‘the average’ computer user into the Twitter fold.

I really like the Tiered Model idea of paying more to get rid of ads and for more features. This is the method Pownce, Flickr and other applications have taken and it seems to work well in both cases.

Here are some ideas I had as for how embracing a ‘twitter-like’ service could benefit more than just the over-ambitious blogging crowd. These applications could be built using Twitter or any other microblog service. What I’m trying to do is demonstrate how developers can capitalize on the popularity of Twitter and possibly push it to the point of ubiquity (like Google).

1. Tracking Packages from FedEx, UPS and other Postage Services.
   Just the other day I waited all morning for an important package to be delivered, constantly refreshing the FedEx tracking webpage to see what the latest updates were. It was actually my girlfriend who pointed out, “..too bad they don’t have Twitter!” which caused me to think about such a scenario. If shipping companies did employ service like Twitter, it would allow me to stay constantly updated to the progress of my packages. If I didn’t have access to a computer for instance, I could have the tracking updates forwarded to my cell phone or mobile device. The driver of the shipping truck would update status by simply waving a wand across his packages and typing in his location, expected delays or ETA. Far fetched? Not at all, this exactly how tracking info is gathered right now. What’s missing is an application that would turn these updates into messages or ‘tweets’.
2. Amber Alerts/Emergency Awareness/Public Service Announcements
   So the state or federal government has a public menace that they need to make the public aware of. They often use traditional media (TV, radio) as well as some localized metods (highway LED Signs) but they’re notorious for ignoring the medium with the biggest audience of them all…the internet. In fact, if the government were to contract Twitter to relay these alerts it would be mutually advantageous as Twitter could send the occasional emergency alert to it’s users site-wide while the authorities could potentially reach new segments of the populous.

   You might recall a few years ago MySpace became a testing ground for this very type of collaboration.

3. Film and Music Product Release Dates
   For all the paranoia that new media is stealing public attention from old media, there aren’t very many traditional outlets taking advantage of what control they do still have left. For instance, why does every record label or major film distributor not have Twitter accounts? Most of us actually want to know when that new album from our favorite artist is released. I’m also twice as likely to follow a companies’ Twitter stream than to join their newsletter. Of course ,the next step would be to offer a way to filter out all the stuff that I DON’T want to be notified of.
4. GPS Breadcrumbs with Notes
   Say you’re a professional runner, national park sentry or hiking enthusiast and you’re hiking along a very rarely used trail. Perhaps you then notice that a bridge is washed out or you see some other danger you want to make people more aware of. You might pull out a GPS cacheing unit, geo tag the location, type a quick note about the incident and either store the message to be sent later or send it via satellite immediately. The people in your community or your colleagues following you would then have all the information they need to avoid the same area and teams could be sent out to rectify the problem.
5. Sport Scores
   For you sports enthusiasts out there, if there was a way to get score updates that you’re interested in without having to check the paper the next morning or various websites, would you be interested? Similar to the application described in #3, if the end user could pick a handful of sport teams that they love and have those new scores appear in his or her Twitter stream (which can also ping your mobile device) it would save quite a bit of time. The user would also need to be able to easily deactivate certain teams or games, for those times when they’ve TIVO’ed it and don’t want to spoil the surprise.
6. Grades
   Often times in the school system, grades and test scores don’t necessarily need to be kept confidential. In those cases, wouldn’t it be great if a student could ping a dedicated Twitter account with their name as a hashtag (ex. #jongos) and get a response back with their scores? Alternatively pinging the account with a #all hastag would retrieve a link to a page with all the grades of their classmates and would mention if a curve was applied. It would be efficient, save paper and save time.
7. Voting
   One of my favorite Twitter applications is twitter.polldaddy.com which allows you to post polls to Twitter. Here’s a real world example: At my condo the HOA often takes votes on various issues: “Should we get a new fence?” “Should we buy that new flood light?” The HOA president could use a service like this to poll our neighbors.

   It’s not hard to imagine a world where a Twitter-like service could be used for more official votes like public office or internal company decisions.

8. Health Appointment Reminders
   Do you have trouble remembering when your next physical is or when you scheduled that next teeth cleaning? While services like Remember the Milk allow you to to create to-do lists and manage tasks, I envision local dentist offices rolling out a service something like this themselves that solely exists to help you manage your appointments. How convenient would it be to receive a Direct Twitter message from a database at your dentist’s clinic reminding you not to be late?
9. Home Security
   A number of people have their home alarms call them when it goes off. It would be smart for companies like ADT to offer a service that can be set up to text, email and or IM you, all things that Twitter does when prompted. The message could inform you of the time, address (especially useful if you have multiple homes) and the area in the home that was triggered. This of course would be a complimentary service offered in addition to the phone call that’s become the standard and the request to send out police.




10. Crash Reports
    Lastly, something that might be useful for software developers, especially those using open source applications like Mozilla’s products or Linux, is an application that logs crashes or software bugs. Something like this application created by Kevin except the database would be public. Normally these messages are sent to huge databases where they may or may not be analyzed by engineers at the company that makes the product. I imagine a service that would send these messages to a web database that would take the users notes, along with the crash report and application info, archive them online and make it all searchable.

    The big concern of course is security, but that could be easily addressed by only making the most common errors and repair public. Hashtags and Twitter’s search option would allow programmers to find the relevant code.

Companies like Mosio are already harnessing the power of the crowd to answer questions. In his post “5 Ways to Use Twitter For Good”, Chris Brogan explores the possibilities of using the Twitter community to solve problems. This is where we start and as more and more developers build on the Twitter API applications like the ones I’ve described will inevitably come into existence. As they do, and as Twitter’s popularity increases, Twitter will venture closer and closure to that tipping point that will make it a household name for years to come.

So my idea was to try to get people who visit my blog to follow me on Twitter where hopefully they will visit my other blogs or become repeat visitors. I started the experiment on April 7th. At that time I had 43 followers on Twitter. Today (just shy of 20 days later) I have 67 followers, a gain of 24 in only 17 days. Using tips gathered from this blog and a redesign of Goscreative.com, I was able to convert some traffic to followers.

Of course, just because people are following me on Twitter doesn’t mean they are listening to what I have to say. The point is, of course, the more people who do follow you, the greater the odds that some of them might listen. Perhaps this is also why people are now paying for Twitter accounts.

There’s no great secret here, I simply put a few links on my blog to my profile on Twitter. 70% of that sites traffic comes from three extremely popular posts that were written months ago. It averages about 200 uniques a day for the past year. If only 1% of that number (2 people) become Twitter followers each day, then I’ve still successfully increased the exposure of my blogs by just that much. Before I could only dream of a conversion rate like that, but I am apparently already close.

A 24 person increase in 17 days isn’t half bad and if that rate remains constant or even grows, I just might reach my goal.

So far it’s still too early in the experiment to tell, I’ll post a follow up in a few weeks to let you know the full results. Also, FYI, I follow 125 people on Twitter so my TPI has improved as well (67/125 = 0.53).

My Twitter Profile

Tool for mining Twitter for statistics and breaking that data down.  Definitely worth checking out.