There's Twitter the company, and twitter the medium

Leo Laporte at the controls during a recent episode of This Week in Tech (TWiT). In the background is Digg founder Kevin Rose.  Credit: insidetwit / Flickr

Last year, Leo Laporte became a Twitter quitter.

The host of one of Silicon Valley’s most popular podcasts was none too excited that of all the names in the world, the burgeoning message service had picked one that hit piercingly close to home. The online broadcasting network that Laporte owns and runs a short walk from his house in Petaluma is called TWiT.tv, after his company’s flagship show, “This Week in Tech.”

The rise of Twitter has long been a favorite topic of conversation on TWiT, and with an audience of around 150,000, Laporte found himself in a strange pickle: The more he talked about Twitter on his show, the more followers he accrued — and the more publicity he gave his brand rival.

“I thought, jeez, I’m building value in this company that is ultimately vying for my trademark,” he said recently via phone. “So I left.”

But in spite of his absence, Laporte still became the most-followed user on the service, beating out front-runners like then-Sen. Barack Obama for the top spot, with more than 30,000 followers. Walking away from a megaphone that big just didn’t seem like good business. So he came back.

“They kind of have you,” said Laporte, who now has more than 100,000 followers on the service. “The same way that Facebook has you: because you have to go where the community is.”

Still, being in thrall to Twitter hasn’t stopped Laporte from joining a conversation that’s taking hold on the service’s fringes. As this group of Web subversives sees it, the once-tiny Twitter has grown like a magic beanstalk into a full-fledged communications medium — taking its place alongside Web pages, e-mail and maybe even television. And though the 30-person, San Francisco start-up is not exactly General Electric, digital trust-busters believe the same rules apply: One company shouldn’t have a monopoly ...

... on an entire medium — even if it invented it.

"Those of us who are participating are pumping value into this closed system and trusting that Twitter will do the right thing with it," said Laporte, referring to the tweets users pour into Twitter's databases every day by the million. 

People love the convenience and reach of social media systems like Twitter, he said.  "But what they ignore is that there’s a dark side to all of that, which is that these companies have a huge amount of control over what’s going on."

Dave Winer, a Berkeley-based entrepreneur and Web innovator, sounded a similar note on a recent podcast posted to his Scripting News blog.

“It’s a very dangerous network because it’s all centralized,” he said, “not only on a technological level, where it goes through one set of servers — but it also goes through one set of business interests that’s anything but transparent.”

Danger may sound a bit overzealous for a Web service that barely existed two years ago, but for a media landscape in the middle of a profound shift, two years can be the span between eras.

Twitter is becoming a major source for news, commerce and free expression and, as with a free press itself, defenders don’t want a few profit-motivated individuals making all the decisions about how it should evolve.

Like Facebook and YouTube before it, Twitter is now transitioning from a freely available, much-loved Web service to a well-funded business venture looking to cash in on the audience and cachet it built in its freewheeling early days.

A few weeks ago, Twitter created a page of several dozen suggested users to help newcomers decide whom to follow. If you weren’t sure how to proceed, you can follow CNN, Lance Armstrong or Britney Spears. Being recommended by Twitter, it was quickly discovered, translated into tens or hundreds of thousands of new followers, and anointed accounts have since shot to the top of the Twitter hierarchy. The giant, instant audiences Twitter bestowed on these select users are thought to be so valuable that Web businessman Jason Calacanis offered Twitter $250,000 for a two-year ride on the list.

As visibility and influence gets funneled upward to the companies, celebrities and politicians that already have plenty of both, Twitter risks inviting a comparison to the overinflated economy — it’s creating a bubble at the top, and potentially alienating regular users who labored to build their audiences over months or years.

Well-known tech figures like Laporte and Winer don’t exactly represent the voiceless online rabble, but neither are they the types of guys you want leading a charge against you.

Winer recently wrote a post called “Why it's time to break out of Twitter,” where he said of the service’s management, “we need to get that power out of their hands.” Laporte told me, “I’m more interested in seeing if we can go beyond Twitter — a more open system would be a better system.”

Both critics have installed their own smaller, open-source micro-messaging systems outside of Twitter’s domain. Laporte calls his the Twit Army.

The software they’re using was developed by Evan Prodromou, a developer in Montreal. Prodromou is the force behind Laconica — an open-source, Twitter-like system that anyone can install; hundreds of administrators already have, creating a dispersed, decentralized network of Twitter clones that can all talk to one another.

Prodromou compares the state of micro-messaging to the early days of consumer e-mail. In the early 1990s, the e-mail world was dominated by proprietary dial-up entities like CompuServe, MCI and Prodigy. But because those systems were competitive, they didn’t connect to one another, and you could send messages only to people inside your own service.

“I couldn’t send you e-mail and you couldn’t send me e-mail,” Prodromou explained. “We were on these separate islands. Making the change to an open standard for Internet e-mail has meant e-mail has become ubiquitous. I think that’s where we’re at now with microblogging.”

A distributed, networked messaging landscape would have the same advantages as the Web itself: no oligarchy with a final say about what’s good, and a redundant structure so one part can fail without the whole thing crashing down.

On the other hand, said Twitter creator Jack Dorsey in an e-mail, “with any new technology, early and strict guidance is needed to foster it.” And certainly, without the control Dorsey and his co-founders had over the growth and development of Twitter, the system wouldn’t exist to fight over.

But maybe that’s an academic argument. Twitter is on the radar now, big time, and its competitors and critics are homing in. If those banging on the gate have their way, micro-blogging will splinter into a thousand pieces, like  websites and blogs already have, and Twitter may find itself starting with a lowercase “t.”

-- David Sarno [follow]

In print as "Twitter has followers who want to lead." 

Correction: This story originally stated that Laporte runs his business from his house in Petaluma, CA.  Rather, the headquarters is at a cottage near his home.

Comments

[Anonymous]

Twitter did the suggested users at the beginning of the year. not a few weeks ago

[rodneymcname44]

Wow, 100,000 subscribers!? Get me on that show, I would love that kind of publicity! Haha.

- Rodney, consultant for Government Grants

[Matthew Rathbone]

Its worth a note that Jason Calacanis increased his offer to $500k in his recent email group update.

I think they're on to something with the suggested users.

[Paul Hale]

I have been using twitter for a while (@paulhale) and have recently noticed a huge influx of twitter users here in the UK. I think this is down to celebs starting to use and promote the system. This in turn gets media interest so papers write twitter related articles & radio shows chat about it bringing twitter to the attention of millions who sign up for the service. The free advertising twitter has had here in the UK is priceless. BBC radio presenters now twitter & mention it on their shows on a daily basis, my wife is a local radio presenter and she twitters live throughout her show. This press coverage is exactly what happened with MySpace and later Facebook.

[Jim Landi]

Leo's broadcasting studio is not from his home but from a rented Victorian house/office bulding down the street.

At first Leo only rented one office, however after branching out with TWiT live, his live video broadcasts, he now rents the whole building.

[Jean-Marc Liotier]

Closed platforms are like ice cubes in a glass of water. They float for a while. They change the temperature of the liquid. Ultimately however, the ice cube eventually melts into the wider web.

Some day, the threat of being made irrelevant by open systems will force Twitter into interoperating with them. How soon will Twitter smell the coffee ?

The same question applies to all the other walled gardens : being closed is cosy only if you are in a position of dominance - and there are now upstarts such as Evan's company who'll interoperate and together create the critical mass that will unbalance the closed systems. Users know the value of openness, and they'll buy into it given the choice.

[viz]

People always love novelties. Another two years and there will be no Twitter.
The future is business networking - not social networking which is a waste of life

[donsms]

Leo LaPorte is always crying about something!,he`s just worried about losing cred as he ages and falls out of favor with people.If he`d concentrate on his own business and stop worrying about other people`s affairs he`d be better off.

[Malcolm Bastien]

As much as I hope for Laporte's success in getting people over to Laconica the service itself needs to do a better job of selling itself better than Twitter. In this open and distributed model of Laconica, I would hope to see a really awesome product that could just blow Twitter out of the water.

We're going to get to a point really soon where the average person wants to participate in online conversations, the way its going now, they'll have to get onto Twitter. And anything that forces people onto one specific platform is not ideal.

[crashsystems]

The killer feature behind Laconica based sites is choice. I'm on Identi.ca (crashsystems), and can easily send messages to people on army.twit.tv, or any of the dozens of other sites using it (http://laconi.ca/trac/wiki/ListOfServers). Before long it will probably be possible to export your profile (posts, replies, follower/following list and all) and move it to another service supporting the Open MicroBlogging protocol.

Twitter could inter-operate with this. The protocol is open. They have been asked, but declined. This is their loss, because though they by far have the most momentum at the moment, the future inevitably is in federated services.

[Cassandra Branson]

The true value of a system like Twitter will be when a variety of sites begin to incorporate it-appropriately-into their current infrastructure.

Twitter in and of itself isn't the value-it's the fact that it allows us all to listen to our users and consumers and respond in a timely fashion.

Eventually it will get bought out, taken over by a media conglomerate that will not be welcomed with open arms, and we'll all move on. But at least we've learned the pricetags associated with branding and what the community does/does not like about us. And we've learned that not responding is 'not' an option.

[jason]

sounds like sour grapes to me. "oh, twitter had a great idea and is drawing lots of attention so let me start my own service. what, nobody's coming and joining my party? well, twitter must have a monoply that we have to break."

nobody is forcing anyone to use twitter. there are other options to using twitter. twitter is so big because it's popular and people want to use it, not other options. so i'm not seeing where the monopoly is.

[Shelly]

Aww... Leo's just mad because he's not in control anymore. I'm happy as both Leo and Kevin try to push their political agenda WAYYYY too much on their listeners. We're not sheep, guys... we do have brains.. and lots of em'. ;)

[Daringar]

Could you please learn to have your links inside your articles open new pages. Its annoying if I click a link part way through the article (planning to read it after I finish the article), just to find the page I'm reading is suddenly gone. You'd think you wouldn't want people leaving in the middle of your half read news article.

[Mr. Smith]

Shelly, you're still a sheep. You're just choosing someone else to tell you what to think.. and I feel sorry for you.

Leo and Kevin aren't pushing any political agenda. They're innovators and entertainers, not politicians.

Hope that whole anger thing works out for you.

[Chris]

I disagree that Twitter should not be in control, however, I agree that there has to be some type of counter measure to stop it from having too much control in, for example a monopoly.

The comparison with email is striking, but when I think about that, I don't like the outcome. The reason I'm using Twitter more and more, is because email isn't doing it for me any longer. Email has been used, abused, and spammed from here to nowhere and back. I think most people would agree that their email is out of control, and that Twitter is a way to directly communicate with people. If you let the control that Twitter has out of the box, and into the hands of the community, it will end up as email now is: Full of spam, ads, and less and less useful so people look for alternatives.

I don't think Twitter should have all of the control, but some control is necessary if you don't want things to get out of hand.

[simon]

I have used tweeter and think its pritty much a geek tool, no matter how great people say it is, I have better things to worry about.

[blackfeathers]

the article should be corrected to 'there's t.w.i.t. the company...' -unless the author is purposely trying to show the confusion over a clarification between twitter and twit.

[LAFD]

Our advice? Use and experiment with them all before you decide: Is it worth the risk of putting all of your eggs in any one basket?

Respectfully Yours in Safety and Service,

Brian Humphrey
Firefighter/Specialist
Public Service Officer
Los Angeles Fire Department

LAFD Twitter: @LAFD and @LAFDtalk
LAFD Blog: http://LAFD.ORG/BLOG

PS. Thanks LAT, this article caused us to resurrect our dormant:

http://identi.ca/LAFD

[BuzzNova]

Possible future business for Twitter: http://buzznova.com/breaking-news-twitter-unveils-suggested-users-paid-service/

[Tai]

They can't walk away from Twitter, it's just too big and getting bigger everyday as it becomes more mainstream. Even Leo's Twit show cant help but talk about Twiiter constantly cause it's always a big part of the tech news.

[David]

They can't walk away from AOL, it's just too big and getting bigger everyday as it becomes more mainstream.

They can't walk away from IBM, it's just too big and getting bigger everyday as PCs become more mainstream.

They can't walk away from MySpace, it's just too big and getting bigger everyday as it becomes more mainstream.

...

[artgrrl]

Twitter has already been incorporated in other websites and blogs and external applications, although this is a one way process as twitter doesn't incorporate anything, like they are holding some kind of power, they are the coachman of microblogging.

[Jim H]

I understand any medium that makes it possible to communicate more easily and more meaningfully. Twitter's got the easy down. Meaningfulness will never come in a jungle of 140-character messages. What will evolve in that space is more and more Perez Hiltons. Flacks and personal assistants pretending that celebrities are actually saying what they're typing. It's junior high all over again.

Instead, let's read a book and go somewhere to talk about it.

[Free Vacation]

I disagree that Twitter should not be in control..