Is Twitter the Digg Killer?

For the longest time, all I heard about was whether or not some up-and-coming site would be the “Digg-Killer”. And site after site failed at that. But in my mind, we’ve had it around for a while now. Twitter. At around the time I really got into Twitter, I began to cut my time with Digg. I don’t really know why. I was an avid Digg user. I used it constantly.

But as Digg began to have articles that I didn’t care about take over the front page, I grew less and less interested.  But I also noticed that articles that I did care about started to show up in my Twitter stream.  As I found a good group of people to follow that were interesting to me and from them, I got the news and articles that were important to me.  I didn’t need Digg and all of its LOLCATS pictures that I see as a waste.

I also started to find that most of the Digg stories that I clicked on came from the same group of sites.  So I just took out the middleman.  I still think that Digg is a great idea but now, I know that an article is really good if it’s re-tweeted to me by multiple Twitter friends.  I’ve removed the politics behind the front page of Digg by following people who I trust will submit interesting stories to me.

What do you think?  Am I completely off here?  I’d love to hear what you have to say.

My Thoughts on the Future of Twitter

You can’t do anything online these days without hearing about Twitter.  I’ve written a few posts about it in the past (found here) and I have to admit that I am impressed with how it has been “blowing up” the past couple of months.  I have had discussions with friends and co-workers about the staying power of Twitter and wanted to share my thoughts with everyone else.

Twitter is a force; an unstoppable force I feel right now.  The only thing standing in its way is itself.  With its huge growth, it has hard times with big events that come with a lot of tweets at the same time.  For example, at the Macworld conference, Twitter experienced a few “Fail Whales” for a couple of hours.  The same with CES that same week.  Other times, it goes down without much of a reason.  But other than that, I really don’t see anything or anyone getting in their way.

I wrote a post comparing Twitter, Plurk and Pownce a few months back and since then Pownce has bowed out of the battle.  Plurk is still just a blip on the radar.  I have an account but don’t really ever use it.  It seemed like a good idea but I never could catch on.  Too many of my friends were on Twitter already and like most people I thought, “Do I need this twice?”

Twitter is not going away any time soon.  I have heard others say that they don’t expect to be on it in 2-3 years time but when I hear that, I can’t help but to think “what will you be on?”  To me, Twitter just has that “it” quality and will soon be mainstream.  I mean, even my mom has an account   I can’t think of anything taking its spot.

It’s one of those things I see people realizing how they lived without before it existed.  Kind of like me with my DVR, I don’t know how I ever was without it.  I feel the same about Twitter.  I have met a ton of people and learned a lot of interesting things in the time I have used it.  I think that Twitter has the power to be around for a while and only grow stronger, probably with the assistance of a bigger company buying them out.  I just hope that They stay true to their initial idea and only imporove upon their infrastructure and stop all of the “Fail Whales”.  Twitter can be a big force like a Google if it plays its cards right.  I guess only time will see.

BrightKite – Twitter with Location

Brightkite is a new site to me that is quickly becoming one of my new favorite sites out there. It’s basically a Twitter clone that allows you to “check in” where ever you are. I find myself using it more than Twitter lately. In fact, I can even update my Twitter feed through BrightKite.

It will tell me who is within a certain radius of me and what they are doing. Users also can upload pictures of these places and anything else that happens. But the best feature is its SMS capabilities. I can sent BrightKite a text message with “@ home” and it will check me in at the location I have marked as my home. I can do the same thing for work too. I can also take a picture, attach that picture to an email with the subject line of what I’m doing and send it to a special BrightKite email address and it will add that picture to that location with whatever I said along with it.

It’s a really cool site, still in beta so you have to get invited to get in. I have 2 invites left so if you want one, let me know. Also, check out my profile here.

Update: I have a total of 5 BrightKite updates to give away now thanks to the awesome people there.

Back on Twitter Again

About a year ago, I wrote that I was checking out the latest and greatest Web 2.0 tool out there, Twitter. Well everyone said it was so great but I wasn’t sure. I gave it a good run but eventually it just died out and i went months without even thinking about it. But recently, I decided to go back and check it out.

I’ve had some friends recently get involved with Twitter so I think that helped me go back. So I started writing what I was doing, or feeling, or just whatever. So it’s been probably 2 weeks that I’ve been back to using it and I have to say that this time is much better than before.

One main reason is the fact that I have several friends who use it now and it’s fun to pseudo-chat over it as we have done a few times. I also have it hooked up to my phone so that I can send and receive messages via text message on my Twitter account. I also have it on my iPod Touch. Makes it so I can have access to Twitter basically whenever I want.

So check me out. Here’s my Twitter page:

http://twitter.com/digijustin

Follow me and then you can have another insight in what makes me tick.

Dropbox – Awesome New Online Storage Idea

The couple of weeks ago, I see a link on Digg about a cool new online storage site called Dropbox. I click it since it’s the top one at that time and was amazed at what I found. It is a revolutionary new way of online storage. If you’ve worked with Subversion, you’ll find that some of its features are in Dropbox. Basically, it acts like this:

• You install their software on any machine you use and it will set up a folder in your My Documents folder called My Dropbox.
• On the web site, you add that computer to your account by name (i.e. My Work Computer).
• You can then copy any file or folder into your My Dropbox folder and it will upload to their web site what was in that folder.
• Go to another of your computers with Dropbox installed and open your Dropbox folder and it will get those new files or folders off of their site automatically.
• If you make a change to a file in your My Dropbox folder, it will be uploaded upon saving and the old version will be stored if you ever would like to revert back to it.
• You can also share folders with anyone else. For example, if you and a friend are working on a job together, you can both place assets up there to use but make it private for just those on the project.

I am really excited about this site. Not very often am I blown away by a new Web 2.0 application but I really think that this one is great in all senses. Unfortunately they do not have a way to invite people but once they do and I get some, I’ll post that I have those available. But do what I did and just hit up Google and do a search for “Drop Box Invites” and see what happens.