Moodgeist, Skype and Twitter IM Overlay

Given Twitter has reached escape velocity, I'm sure Obvious Corp. is in for an exit.  It is a clear and simple fit for many social media portal players.  But I think the interesting fit is how Twitter could complement an IM network.  To turn this question around, consider if AIM, Y! messenger, MSN or others suddenly enabled IM status to serve as the message and the buddy list to be a social network?

Well, the prototype already exists, with Skype.  Jaanus Kase, Skype community marketing manger, created Moodgeist.  You install a pinger and your Skype mood message is broadcast publicly.  You can browse recent moods, subscribe to feeds and see popular words.

Now, its just a hack to show off the Skype API, and me mentioning it might crash his server.  But you can see where it could go.  If Moodgeist pingers were part of the Skype software, the social network truly served as a filter, they added an SMS gateway and let you share moods either publicly or privately -- you have Twitter on a massive scale, technically.

But this is the consumer internet and Twitter has less to fear.  Twitter is a cultural product.  You see culture in the conventions and shared language such as @username.  You can't just overlay culture, it needs to be cultivated.

Comments

[Patrick]

Interesting concept of linking and micro-archiving "moods" however I think MoodGeist fails to capture that feeling of ambience or crowd noise that makes twitter so great. Leisa Reichelt described it as "ambient intimacy" and I think she hit the nail on the head (http://www.disambiguity.com/ambient-intimacy/). Twitter exists in that fine balance of social activity, awareness, and interestingness that's similar to a large dinner party or FOAF party.

On the technical side, I think successful innovation will continue down the path of linking specialized services rather than integrating services. Despite all the efforts in developing unified interfaces and desktops, consumers just seem more comfortable with keeping everything separate and using basic tools to access content as needed. Twitter made it so simple to get updates and blog via existing popular services like IM and SMS. Email should be next on their list.

[Bill Seitz]

I don't think I agree that they have nothing to fear. If AOL/AIM got off their butt and built something that replicated Twitter with the AIM BuddyList, adoption would happen really fast.

I think that Twitter has achieved super-fast penetration of the EarlyAdoptor crowd, but could be passed easily by a big player.

http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/z2007-03-22-TwitterCopying