While Twitter might be on top of the current craze of social networking services at the moment, it’s not without considerable reason. Most skeptics have the same first reaction to it: Why would I bother? While the idea that you post updates in under 140 characters to your “followers” sounds slightly inane, when given a context, Twitter shines like dimes.
Last week, I was at South by South West music convention in Austin, Texas. The event hosts thousands of events over an 8 day period. The visiting clientele are all like-minded people: either interested in film, music and/or technology. One thing you notice about people attending is that almost all of them have an iPhone or Blackberry. Clearly, these savvy Americans are early adopters of new technology and with that comes innovation even beyond what the services were originally intended for. Free Wi-Fi is available almost everywhere or very closeby in Austin so people use Twitter to gauge lots of things. For example, music events vary in popularity so sets from buzz bands will always command a crowd. Using Twitter, you can do a quick search for say - “Glas Vegas” (using http://search.twitter.com) and get real time updates from people who have recently tweeted using those words. Thus, you can find out whether the queue to get in is too long or if the show is running late or if it is any good almost in real-time. This valuable info allows you to then make an informed decision about what you will visit next or not, as the case may be, especially when combined with Sched.org – a vital scheduling tool where you can create a personal schedule of festival events and carry it with you on your phone’s browser or calendar.
I used the very same technique to find out information on rumoured shows from Kanye West (true), Leonard Cohen (not true) and finding a lift out to a Mad Decent after-hours party about 5km out of town. I was also informed via Twitter than Kanye was joined by Common and Erykah Badu during the show thanks to one of the people I’m following; vital information for someone covering the festival to know.
Industry panels and talks also take place at SXSW and here Twitter’s dominance is also apparent. Large screens showing real-time reactions on Twitter to the panel (using an agreed tag) from the audience turn a (usually) pretty boring monologue into a fully interactive debate. You might potentially learn more from the thoughts of the audience than the panelists even if you’re not in the room. These are all fine examples of technology improving experiences and facilitating information and there’s nothing inane about that.
