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Twitter Is The Future Of Presence And Collaboration

I admit it, I've been spending too much time with Twitter. But as a result of my growing Twitter addiction, I have discovered all kinds of cool things about it.

When the buzz about Twitter first broke, I was skeptical. I thought it seemed like a lame compromise between IM and blogging. I had no interest in posting short entries about going to the restroom or buying mouthwash in Wal-Mart.

During the first few months this year I watched Twitter, largely from the sidelines. I noticed that Twitter evolved. It became something more than either blogging or IM. But I couldn't figure out what Twitter was turning into.

After playing with Twitter (and cool Twitter tools like TwitterVision), I realized that Twitter is really the future of presence, collaboration, and possibly even location.

Twitter breaks open the concept of presence. Instead of being a passive application -- i.e. I log onto Skype or an IM client like Yahoo and I show up on all my friend's buddy lists -- Twitter turns presence into an active, participatory forum. I can broadcast my activities -- along with any issues I am having with them -- to my social network. Now, unlike traditional IM clients, you can't have big Twitter buddy lists of hundreds of random people. I find it doesn't work that well.

But small groups -- say between 5 and 30 -- are perfect for Twitter-based collaboration. By being able to push out status updates and short questions to tight circles of friends, you can use Twitter as a real-time work tool.

And as I pointed our earlier today, Twitter is optimized for mobile, so it works seamlessly across mobile devices and laptops, making it the first truly seamless mobile presence and collaboration application in one platform.

Since Twitter is so mobile-friendly, it's also a natural fit for location. In fact, applications like the aforementioned TwitterVision show how Twitter can add location to presence and collaboration. Imagine using Twitter to manage a work-group of 15 people spread out over the world -- or even spread out over one city.

What do you think? Do you think Twitter is the future of presence? Or am I still too geeked out from the Twittering?

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