Twitter: Too Broadly Scoped?

Although Twitter is the true inspiration for this idea, I can’t let mine go without a name.  In the following paragraphs you will read about ideas such as Switter (or possibly Alterer).  I hope you find the following compelling, and grant me time to pursue its implementation.

Twitter?

In case you don’t know, Twitter allows messages you broadcast to all those “following” you to be at most 140 characters long.  Everyone’s profile is public, and anyone may follow anyone else.  Twitter, a dynamic process, can be controlled and contained in a number of ways.  Some of these may be usable in business or other settings in which universal broadcast capability is not helpful or desired.

Switter?

Specifically, I’m proposing a Twitter in which only those who can access the Software and IP Engineering intranet can register.  Twitter can be a revolutionary way to communicate across boundaries of time and space, facilitation a kind of conversation that is difficult to sustain in any other medium.  I provide several links to corporate use cases in the references (1,2,3).

Ignoring the life-altering communication paradigm shift that Twitter is, the idea is also useful as a basic, real-time, long-range, broadcast communication system which can be integrated with existing corporate systems very easily.  By allowing employees to register their phone number and receive text messages from other employees (without actually exchanging their phone numbers), the corporate network is extended to be a wireless network with no loss of security.  Employees may also elect to read messages online or receive them via email or even an RSS/ATOM feed which can be integrated into other web pages.  Furthermore, by allowing intranet applications to register accounts and drive feeds, running status updates can be generated, and anyone interested may subscribe.  Applications might include: ATS, build status, document publishing, organizational updates, code warnings, QHM, and administrative updates on any application department-wide.

But facilitating human communication remains the most important objective of this system.  It is hard to describe the perspective-changing effect of being connected to a group of people and data sources you select.  It can allow any employee Worldwide to be chosen as someone nearby to share your environment.  This creates a positive community of support and innovation.  By projecting ideas into the Ethernet, it becomes possible to work more closely as a team; discover things you wouldn’t know to ask, but which can help you a great deal; meet new people through shared interests; get ideas and feedback from a diverse set of followers; provide input and advice to developments of interest; collaborate quickly and spontaneously from anywhere.

How?

In order to create this application, we need to be able to send and receive text messages from user cell phones.  Sending can be done from the intranet, but to receive them we need a direct Internet connection.  We can use software.altera.com for that, but it will have to forward the sweets (which are pure text and not processed in any way) to the intranet server through an SSH tunnel.  Other than that tricky part, all we need are:

A database to track:

• Users; emails, phones, default preferences & schedules
• User group memberships (search on # too slow)
• Rs and Es (graph nodes)
• Es include optional schedule/preferences
• User timelines
• Users (@); can generate groups (#), public

Some web pages:

• Registration
• View user (reuse org identity for non-anonymous system)
• “Sweet” (send)
• “Follow” (add target to user.E)
• Timelines: user, group, public in HTML & RSS

And a few tools:

• tinyurl.com functionality on the intranet
• Command-line tool to sweet, follow
• We will want to be able to search sweets (4)

References?

1. http://www.fastforwardblog.com/2008/01/30/trends-to-watch-twitter-in-the-enterprise/
2. http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/12/27/thinking-about-push-and-pull-and-twitter-in-the-enterprise/
3. http://onlinefacilitation.wikispaces.com/Twitter+Collaboration+Stories
4. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/05/its-time-to-start-thinking-of-twitter-as-a-search-engine/