I was very surprised at how boring this video turned out to be. Draw Luck and Iterate?
Here are the actual keys to Twitter's success:
1. Simplicity - get updates from your people you are interested, and maybe let everyone else know what you are doing too. Lots of successful companies start with simple descriptions like this. Google was just about SEARCH, Facebook was just a digital contact book, etc. Twitter is surprising in that they have kept it so simple for so long and still seen growth.
2. Asymmetric Relationships - you can follow me, but I don't have to follow you. Made the service great for celebrities, which in turn brought more people onto the service. This is a big difference between it and Facebook, who had to invent "pages" and "fans" to be able to support the same thing.
3. The API - twitter.com is all fine and good, but the open API meant anyone can make great 3rd party apps. That twitter was so open with their data was rather novel. Hopefully twitter wont mess that up, but the purchase of tweetie makes me skeptical.
Here are the actual keys to Twitter's success:
1. Simplicity - get updates from your people you are interested, and maybe let everyone else know what you are doing too. Lots of successful companies start with simple descriptions like this. Google was just about SEARCH, Facebook was just a digital contact book, etc. Twitter is surprising in that they have kept it so simple for so long and still seen growth.
2. Asymmetric Relationships - you can follow me, but I don't have to follow you. Made the service great for celebrities, which in turn brought more people onto the service. This is a big difference between it and Facebook, who had to invent "pages" and "fans" to be able to support the same thing.
3. The API - twitter.com is all fine and good, but the open API meant anyone can make great 3rd party apps. That twitter was so open with their data was rather novel. Hopefully twitter wont mess that up, but the purchase of tweetie makes me skeptical.