Twitter Invades The Desktop
from the next-generation-twitter dept
If you're not an OS X application developer, you can be forgiven for missing last week's debut of MGTwitterEngine. It is, admittedly, a bit arcane: a software component designed for use by developers that allows them to more easily interface with a proprietary messaging network. I wouldn't hold my breath for an Xbox version if I were you. But the software -- and the enthusiastic response it received -- are still worth noting as evidence of notification frameworks' potential for growth.
Many Mac users are familiar with Growl, the ambient notification system that tastefully alerts them of new emails, appointments, completed downloads or any of a huge variety of other system events. There are libraries that make it easy for developers to make their applications display messages through Growl, and many have. But while an ambient notification on your screen is great, an ambient notification that gets routed to whatever display you find most useful is better. So MGTwitterEngine makes it easy for developers to get their apps talking to Twitter (not that it was very hard to begin with -- Twitter's API is quite easy to use). If the idea catches on, soon you'll be able to get a Tweet when your DVD rip completes or as confirmation when your nightly backup succeeds. I wrote about "push" notification technology's resurgence a little while ago; when I did, these were some of the kinds of applications that I had in mind.
Of course, I don't mean to simply boost Twitter. As others have pointed out in comments to previous posts, the service can be spotty, and these days it's far from unique. Twitter owes its current success to its pedigree, its developer-friendly API and its SMS capabilities; for those reasons it seems likely to be the first to gain significant traction in the application notification space. But it would be a shame if a proprietary solution wins the day. For that reason it's worth keeping an eye on the occasional discussions hosted by Dave Winer about building a noncommercial, federated Twitter alternative (likely on top of XMPP).
Will those musings go anywhere? I have to admit that I have no idea — I'm skeptical, but wary of betting against such an endeavor after witnessing OpenID's come-from-behind success. Either way, it seems certain that soon more websites, applications and services are going to be sending me notifications through Twitter or something like it -- perhaps even allowing some of the musings of my colleagues in the Techdirt Insight Community, on how Twitter can be useful for companies to start to come true.
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Filed Under: notifications, twitter
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Wait...
Oh twitter? ya, thats for twits. You don't need a twitting server to send out SMS notifications.
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Re: Wait...
The point is, Twitter is still chugging along and isn't tanking like most neat, but easily duplicated ideas do. Oh, and Twitter isn't limited to just SMS. You can have it do auditorial beeps if you want.
You could compare Twitter to Trillian. Most people I know of prefered Gaim for several reasons over Trillian. I still prefer Pidgin over Trillian. But Trillian gets more widespread use. It's a brand thing.
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Re: Re: Wait...
But its not growing in popularity either.
As for pidgin, ya, its gaining steam, and most people cutting edge prefer it over other options. gaim already faded into obscurity, and trillian is headed that way.
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Re: Re: Wait...
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Twitter is still fresh to me, but it represents so
To have a unified Twitter-like service on my desktop would be great.
This combined with iGoogle, Google Docs, Google Maps, YouTube, MySpace, our growing blog, antiaging4geeks.com, my AT&T Tilt, and more web 2.0 thrilling modules, widgets, and plugins, and Windows begins to be eroded like melting ice.
It does not get replaced by a single new stunning OS, but rather, enough inroads are made into the windows dominance that, eventually, the scales will tip, and, to unify the newly sprouted web flora will be some online gadget that unifies all the new services under one desktop widget that starts off small, but eventually, you enlarge it with the enlarge arrows until the little widget dominates your entire desktop space and the wallpaper and windows icons underneath become obscured.
In order to survive, Microsoft will be forced into downsizing windows into something more than BIOS but less than the bloated, glitched OS that it is now.
Peter J. Lupo Esq.
antiaging4geeks.com
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