What (almost) made my evening
It’s been a couple of hours since I downloaded onto my Android the brand new Seesmic app, so I think it’s time I shared some vision with you, real time fans.
Seesmic pushed it earlier today along with the BlackBerry version.
I’ve been a Twidroid user for about 4 months since I had already lost hope in seeing Seesmic on Android before the IPhone version.
I will continue to use Twidroid as my main mobile client until Seesmic becomes the client I want. And I’m sure it will.No, I’m not talking about lacking features like Facebook integration and fixing 1 or 2 glitches in notification*. In sure the fellow devs back in Bucharest have them on their tasklists since long time ago.
I’m talking about bringing the power of the new Twitter features to the mobile. Here’s a couple of ideas:
- making use of the geotagging feature
- ability to set a particular list as the mainview (instead of the /following/ default)
As Loic mentioned, the main advantage of Seesmic is that it’s everywhere. It’s been my favourite linux client since it launched, the Silverlight version rocks in terms of UI while the mobile versions come to complete the picture.
I’ll be also closely following the Supertweet** implementation. I foresee a Mozilla-like business model for the apps like Seesmic and Twidroid.That goes too for the Desktop-based clients.
Let me explain that a little bit:
Twiter’s API openness led to lower trafic onto the homepage. Which makes sense. Less and less users are old-school and most of us leave the webif in favor of some client application. You may believe this is a threat for Twitter’s developing plans. Especially now after rebuilding their TOS few months ago and publicly announcing an advertising based business model. Guess what? You’re wrong!
Robert did a great job here explaining a possible SuperTweet concept. Which may fit in. But not with the Twitter apps. They have the power. They control which information they get from the API and serve it to you. We’re talking business here so ideas like Twitter putting constrains in return for whitelisting is out of the question. Instead I see an incentive for the app owners. And based on existing models, you do the math.
If this assumption is correct, you would expect Twitter to push harder to draw more customers to the use of the very first native client which is their own web interface. Instead, it does the exact opposite: pushes features available just to the API users. So where’s the catch?
The webif is essentially a page inside a browser. There’s some tweaking possible (e.g. some Google Gears could be added) but it remains a simple webpage.
However, the app installed on your computer or mobile is something that stays open most of the time you’re using your device. Think of the metadata it can gather! Even submitted anonymously things like habits, referrals (which you can’t catch from the browser) and other stats are worth a fortune!
I look at all these things now and see myself on the very edge of a grand canyon which is the web3.0
A mobile era with coherent business models which is all about leveraging the power of the social content!