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Nevermind @aplusk, Social Media Stars Rise on Twitter

I am sure you've noticed. Twitter is the new home for social media power users. Lured by the conversation and engagement with followers that comes with real-time sharing, the big users are doing a land-grab on Twitter to establish their network. And these networks are big, very active and growing fast. Like Digg, these networks drive awareness of stories. But what is most interesting, is that power users are building very active conversation hubs, centered on sharing high quality content.

For example, check out @zaibatsu, one of the top social media users. Unlike popular celebrities who tweet occasionally, Reg Saddler is building a conversation hub and it's working. He's growing a huge base of followers that enjoy the value of his shared content and the activity of his conversation, and as a result he receives tons of RTs which push his network further. Reg was very successful at driving stories to the Digg home page. At Twitter, his success will be measured by follower count and he's shooting for 500,000. Take a look at the reach and velocity of his conversation.



People like Reg made Digg work. But unlike Digg, Twitter is a distributed network and the conversation hub currently does not have a centralized home - there is no "frontpage" on Twitter for example. Anyone can join the conversation from a variety of Twitter clients and apps. As a result, value and influence is shifting from the host (like Digg) to the actual user (like @zaibatsu): Reg can have a direct relationship with the consumers of his content on Twitter. Conversation hubs are building their own equity value. And new opportunities are available as a result.

Some active conversation hubs:

@zaibatsu

@chrispirillo

@buzzedition

@dudeman718

@mayhemstudios

@cheth

@sharonhayes

@murnahan

@ttlFantastic

@kimsherrell

@tommytrc

Check out analytics of influential Twitter users. Note these conversation hubs have high velocity (they are like a chat room) and generosity (they follow back and engage).

Tweetmi - Discovering the best of Twitter

In my last post I provided an illustration that highlighted the opportunity to build community-oriented applications that incorporate real-time search, real-time aggregation and real-time forums. I decided to try to do all this in one app - Tweetmi.

Tweetmi helps you discover the best of Twitter for any topic. Tweetmi finds the most active people and stories that are driving the real-time conversation on Twitter, making it perfect for searching or tracking your topics of interest - whether they are your favorite tv shows or your favorite technology.



Tweetmi taps into the Twitter search API to display a real-time feed of Tweets on any topic. But the cool part is that it uses these real-time tweets to maintain a running index of the real-time conversation. And from this conversation, we can extract great content. And this works for any search query.

I think it's an interesting project because as everything shifts to real-time, we'll need a way to capture the best of this ongoing stream, so we don't miss the highlights.

Real time apps.. what to build next?

So Facebook wins the lifestream, Twitter wins status, and the battles for photos and videos etc is long done. What's next?

The real-time web introduces a few new battlefronts. These arising opportunities tap into real-time status updates to provide value to the community at large.



I just picked three categories of new products that can monitor real-time status and provide value-added services:

1. Real-time search is already here. Huge opportunity to re-invent search with relevancy of time and social connnection. Obviously Twitter is all over this. So is Facebook, Friendfeed and anyone in the lifestream market.
2. Bookmarks are dead. But links are flowing through status messages, and they can now be automatically aggregated into rankings or context. Twitturly and Stocktwits are two fine examples. Lots of cool real-time news / link aggregation across different categories can be created.
3. And there will be a growing category of real-time forums. These ad-hoc, live, interactive groups can be formed by matching interests or proximity automatically detected from status. I would place location-based services such as Google's new Latitude into this broad category. The next Browzmi version will sit in this box too.

Real time is going to be big time.. I am sure people have tons more ideas.

Always starts with a picture

It looked like a good idea from the beginning.. (from LATimes). A good story on the origins of Twitter.

What investors see in Twitter

From Techcrunch article:

IVP, a new Twitter investor, sites these product strengths:

1. Open
2. Real-time
3. Ubiquitous
4. Scalable
5. Persistent

And that it is breaking into mainstream adoption cycle.

Feedly is thinking

So now that I'm writing again, I'll take note of a diagram I saw today on Feedly's blog.

What's interesting here: "Feedly Real-time Integration Hub." Hmm..