So i’ve been thinking about twitter recently and have pretty much come to the conclusion that twitter is/will be the new form of chat going forward.  In it’s current incarnation, i think mostly because of celebrities, it’s become generally a one way ‘status update’ system.  While it can still be used this way, many users are using it as way to have conversations with new people (@signsomeone), and have conversation around general topics (#hash).

If you think about it, it’s pretty much similar to the way chat used to be: IRC (internet relay chat, go look it up).  On IRC you could congregate around a specific topic (#hash) and talk to random people.  The benefit of twitter compared to IRC is that the topic chats have no formal rooms and everything is public.  Information around topics are also available to more people because of its public nature and are archived which oddly, allows for asynchronous communication, or better,  real-time (synchronous) communication.

I’ve found that the brands who use it best are the ones who use it as a form of this one-to-one real-time communication.  They are able to see what people are saying about them, since there are no “formal rooms” and are able to address them directly.  This provides a valuable source of what people are saying about them, and allows them to join in on the conversation about themselves.

Oddly, most brands however just use twitter as a form of one-way communication, broadcasting out “updates” to their ‘users’, which I believe is just a lack of understanding on their part of the medium.  Think about it this way… If I don’t care to visit your site, or follow your RSS feed, why would I care to follow your twitter feed?  It really makes no sense.

Going forward what I believe we’ll really start to see is more focus on grouping people together, which they’ve started with the #hash feature and the new lists feature.  I also believe the hashing and the lists can be a potential revenue model, similar to what youtube has done with their brand pages.    I may throw up a demo site to feature this thought in the future.  I’ve been already thinking of possible funny branding opportunities around #hash marks.

Anyway, anyone have any thoughts about this?