Tech Town, NC

Twitter, an absolute obsession, nay, a way of life for some, is not even on the radar for many people outside Silicon Valley. The root of this lies in the fact that Silicon Valley is the first to know about new technology, either by word of mouth or by targeting of PR and marketing toward that region. The targeting is, of course, merited due to the early adopter culture and all that VC money looking for a home. So once you get past the obvious fixation on all things new and shiny, what allows certain companies and applications to make the leap, and others to stay grounded? And is Twitter going to make the leap or stay at home?

Since there is already a mountain of Twitter speculation out there, I’ll be realistic and say I don’t really know, but I do think being outside the Valley gives me a better perspective on this. I have a clearer view of what obstacles Twitter will have to overcome to penetrate RTP, North Carolina, and any other area outside of Silicon Valley (and, ok they’ve got Manhattan already too). In a few minutes of gazing at Twittervision, I didn’t see a single tweet from NC. It was dominated by CA, NY, and Japan. So what is taking us so long?

As many people have noted about twitter, it’s not very much fun if you’re all alone. What my brief twittervision experiment showed me is that I would be pretty lonely if I relied just on my local tweets (However, being part of the tech world, I have plenty of feeds to follow with relevant news). So, since most people in the Tar Heel state don’t follow web 2.0, most people will not find what they need on twitter.

But, wait, what about personal tweeting? Ah, now we come to the razor’s edge upon which twitter’s future teeters. In the Valley, everyone picked up twitter to try it, then realized they could promote their companies and keep up with news. With the twitter-sphere thus instantly populated, socializing could take place. Until “average” people have a reason to pick up twitter, there won’t be critical mass for social tweeting.

So why is it popular in NY? Aside from the strong tech community there, the media is the next-best home for tweets, because echo chambers love anything that makes them louder. Ergo, hubs of both Main Stream Media, and Amateur Media have found another amp and are plugged in. If a NY food blogger wants to live-microblog a restaurant review to draw traffic to his home page, twitter is there.

The echo chamber effect is particularly attractive to amateur media, which is both more nimble in adopting and testing new technology and more personal in its approach to content. Take the feeds of Robert Scoble and Michael Arrington, for example. Their feeds feature personal pictures as icons, and their tweets blend factual reports, rumors, opinions, rants, and personal anecdotes. Really, a perfect Twitter blend. Compare that to the NY Times feeds, which features a staid “T” logo, and links to articles. That is a typical corporate Twitter use, but you know that the reporters behind those articles are using twitter in their personal time to broadcast their own opinions, rants, and anecdotes.

So what should twitter do to help its chances in the “real world?” It needs to give people any possible excuse to try out the service and keep populating the twitter-sphere. I think they’re on the right track with a robust API and cool services built on top of it – but I also don’t think we’ll stop hearing that million dollar question, “WTF is Twitter?” anytime soon.