Twitter – Become the (Facebook) Platform, For Mobile

twitterI had an idea last week while chatting with Alex Payne, one of the Twitter developers.

In the past, I wrote about how Twitter opened up their API for direct messages — which I thought was going to be huge and allow apps/services to be built-off Twitter (I even posted on how to create these Twitter apps). I thought this was the move that would turn Twitter into a platform for mobile (as Facebook has now done for the web).

Well, it wasn’t huge. Why? Because the syntax still sucks for direct messaging in Twitter. In order for any SMS service to really take off, it requires advertising/promotion — and/or a simple way of someone using it that can be communicated to a dummy.

If you had a weather Twitter app — right now you’d have to tell people, send a text of “d weather 14202″ to 40404. You should be able to tell people, send a text to “join weather” or “join weather 14202″ and then the user would get a reply text telling them how to get their weather in the future. [If the user was already joined to the service, it'd tell the user that and remind them how to use that app in the future]

Twitter has the ‘join’ username reserved and has used it in the past (for SXSW, as an example). Users that did ‘join sxsw’ were added to that SXSW “friend” and were basically apart of a group; they were notified whenever some of the other friends in that group were posting twitters.

My recommendation to Twitter is to allow application developers to start writing apps and make use of your ‘join’ username. Maybe you approve apps before they can use ‘join’. But if you make this happen, then I think you’ll see a lot more promotion of your service in offline print (app developers will put money behind their apps using your shortcode/platform), as well as word-of-mouth — because people will be recommending cool apps (that ultimately use your platform).

f8I could see Twitter becoming the platform for SMS applications, as Facebook is quickly becoming the platform for web applications.

Of course, somehow these apps need to be able to monetize themselves. As do you. So you likely need to start opening up some advertising opportunities within the SMS’ themselves when there are characters still available. Or you could charge app developers usage rates.

Subscribe to Steve Poland's blog by Email


Want to read more stuff by me? Here are some of my popular posts: Read my other start-up related posts.
  • http://Mobivity.com Mobivity

    Steve,

    As you know, our platform already does this. Developers can get a keyword on our short code and build the apps you are talking about.

    We currently charge the developer, but have advertisers interested in sponsoring. Developers can even charge users .50 per message.

    Developers should check out our api at mobivity.com.

    Greg

  • http://www.vestedventures.com Steve Poland

    After the initial use of ‘join’, then there needs to be common/easy syntax to use those services that a user “joins”. Thus, “@weather 14202″ — because maybe if a Twitter username is designated as a service, then any “@(username)” command doesn’t show publicly on your profile, rather it is a direct command to that service. [But what if the user does a typo in that username? Then they're command would be public -- and might contain info they don't want to share with the world.]