Twitter founders interviewed at All Things D event in Carlsbad yesterday. a great 10 minutes interview with Walt Maoosberg and Kara Swisher from the Wall Street Journal. There are lots of nuggets about where Twitter is headed and how they have hit over 30 Million monthly users. It is moving beyond the early adopters and into the mainstream very rapidly. They get asked some tough questions.

Sit thru the 10 second commercial. The 10 minute video is really good. it is all the highlights from the interview from the WSJ team.

OK It is official… The “Oprahfication” of Twitter has become a reality. Today Oprah had Twitter co-founder EV on the show as well as Ashton Kutchner (@aplusk) while Oprah did her first tweet… which as a funny side note was all in CAPS

Why does this matter if celebrities use twitter and tweet? It is only mildly interesting to follow celebrities from my perspective. However we happen to live in a celebrity obsessed culture where people want a peek behind the velvet rope and a peek into the “lifestyles of the rich and famous”… Remember that show? The proof here is that Oprah set a Twitter Follower Velocity Record: 225,000 followers in 13 hours. At this rate she will kick Ashton Kutchner’s butt in the number of twitter followers in under a few days.

The big news story is not that Oprah is on twitter. The BIG news is that Oprah has huge Gravitational pull in social networks. She has the ability to get soccer moms that are technophobes to try new stuff and push their boundaries. This is great news as twitter is a new communication channel and the value of the eco-system and network increases as more people use it.

Twitter can be a broadcast distribution channel and that is exactly Oprah’s use case. It works for her and celebs.

Here is the video with Oprah and Gal Pals tweeting it up and chatting with Ashton Kutchner

Twitter is announcing a new hand held device that appears to be like a full featured twitter interaction device. Word on the street is that the Twitter Wingman will be released in 3 months to the general public. Tentatively named the Twitter Wingman; it is roughly the size of a large page device, it has enhanced features such as:
** Ability to group people (big value there)
** Built in 5 Meg camera with a flash
** A $30 - 40 price tag with a two-year contract on Boost Mobile
** Integrated GPS with real time maps that allow you to locate other Wingmen in the area.
** Bluetooth data transfers between Wingmen.
** Dedicated hot keys for sending direct tweets, picking up new followers, and retweeting.

Check out more details in this great video from the team at WIRED.

While all of this could prove promising… I have to ask myself… “Do I really need to carry another device? Couldn’t we just build most of this functionality right into an iphone app?” This clearly does have a push to drive more acceptance on the low end based upon the price point. Let’s not forget that once you have a device like this it could become a very solid channel to drive geo specific & relevant advertising through.

Although this is an April fools joke. It is not too nutty to become something that just might work.

I was on PBS Marketplace this morning talking about Twitter with technology & entrepreneur reporter Mitchell Hartman. We were discussing the future of Twitter and how it is moving into directions that is not obvious to many just yet. Here are a few quotes from the clip:

“Rodney Rumford is author of the book “Twitter as a Business Tool”: Programmers could find a way to tie into the machine-language level and interface that with real-world, let’s call them “life-hack” type of devices. This means machines communicating with other machines, plants or animals communicating with us. It also means we can interact with the computers that crunch all the data being collected every minute on Twitter.”

“Rumford says Twitter is allowing us to create new social intelligence about ourselves at breakneck speed. They’ve really developed the tube, if you will, for this data to flow through. And an easy tube to plug into. Rumford’s favorite new toy: a GPS mapping program that tracks fellow-tweeters in real-time so you can go meet them for drinks or a movie. If you can put your cell phone down that long.”

Have a listen to the audio clip from the radio program.

You can grab the full show notes and resources mentioned over at Marketplace:

As an interesting side note. The PBS reporter Mitchell Hartman @entrepreneurguy live tweeted his highlights from the show as it aired live on the radio. (we were both up at 3:49am Pacific Time for this)

I wanted to quickly give you some food for thought. The opportunities for large AND small businesses on Twitter are huge.  Watch what Scott Monty from FORD says about their experience on Twitter in this Fox Business segment. Notice he says they are not interested in advertising on social networks like Twitter; rather it is about connecting with their target demographic on social networks like Twitter. This is a trend that is here to stay: customers are EXPECTING for your company to be on Twitter and have you interact with them.

I asked Scott via Twitter for 1  benefit of Twitter for Ford. He Tweeted this response.

My favorite quote from the video clip. Scott: “It is less about a campaign and more about a commitment… It is an ongoing way of doing business that we are going to see…”

Some of the Ford Twitter Accounts: Each account serves a specific purpose as a communication channel to address different market segments.

FordTrucks

FordDriveOne

FordDriveGreen

FordCustService

FordMustang

FordRacing

Side Note: Even the anchors on Fox News are on Twitter. You can follow Fox News anchor Liz Claymen on Twitter.

I heard of this plane crash from my wife as she got delayed and did not hop her flight to CT. She told me a plane had just crashed (I was reading a book). I hopped on Twitter only to become horrified to learn of the details as they unfolded on twitter right before my eyes. I used to work for a company in Clarence Center. I love the people of this tight knit community and have always had a soft spot for them and flew in there regularly for many years.

I immediately learned via Twitter that Keith Burtis http://twitter.com/KeithBurtis was there when the plane crashed and heard it go down. Soon he was on Fox news talking with Julie Banderas from FOX news http://twitter.com/JulieBanderas She had discovered that he was an eyewitness via twitter immediately after he tweeted this. http://twitter.com/KeithBurtis/status/1205256171

I turned on fox news and saw this on the TV and shared it via twitpic to Twitter http://www.twitpic.com/1gnlu

My point in this blog post is to show an example of how Twitter is in fact a communication channel that people use for news discovery, sharing and adding value and changing the experience of this tragedy. I immediately relayed all info related to emergency efforts and helping the families. I wanted to help spread as much helpful information to as many people as possible quickly.

I immediately became immersed and went to find the exact location of the crash on street level view via asking people on twitter if they knew the location; and someone on twitter responded within minutes. The crash site was about 1.5 miles from a company I worked for many years ago. Click on the map and you can “drive” down the road where the plane crash occurred.

View Larger Map
I also discovered via Twitter that there was a flight recording from the air tower with the conversation that you can hear here: http://www.flightglobal.com/airspace/files/folders/27435/download.aspx

I also discovered via twitter a live stream from the local buffalo TV news station and still have it on at 2am pacific time. My life is changed by social media and how I communicate, share and experience events is forever changed. Additionally, it is yet another example of how the news business is leveraging the communication channel of Twitter to listen, discover and share. Social Communication Channels are not a fad. This one is here to stay.

In closing, my heart and prayers go out to the friends and families of loved ones that were lost. I still do not know if there is anyone I knew on the plane at this time. You can go to donate and help the families of this horrific tragedy on Kieth Burris Blog http://keithburtis.com

Twitter also allows me to share my favorite tweets that are related to the tragedy that I bookmarked here http://www.twitter.com/rumford/favorites

Twitter search is coming in 10 days.  It would appear that Twitter will start rolling out search as an integrated feature into the homepage of Twitter for about 1% of their users. Twitter is smart to do this as it give them a relevant path to monetization and a way to enhance the service and make it easier for users to find the content (conversations, products, services, brands, topics) that they want to find.

The reason this is important is because Twitter has said that they would use search to introduce businesses to people. This is exactly what I wrote a week ago and mocked up a few different versions of  what it might look like here.

Biz Stone, one of Twitter’s co-founders, told The Times: “Search integration is a way of introducing relevancy to people. This is not just about ‘What are you doing?’ but about what everyone else is doing. Twitter is about finding out what is going on out there right now in real time. This is a powerful new way of repositioning the product.”

He said that tracking keywords for companies, giving companies an official presence on the site and helping them to introduce themselves to customers were all possible revenue generators. Read between the lines here; this means advertising, paid placement, data mining and monitoring (brand and reputation management).

“Hi I would like to introduce my business to you”… this sounds like an advertisement to me. Companies will pay money for an audience and exposure at relevant times to that audience. I just happened to call it “People You Should Know”, which is effectively the same thing.

I think that this makes tremendous sense and is win/win/win. I would also suspect that there will be “Official” business accounts on Twitter that might look just slightly different. As Twitter continues to grow at a rate of well over 700% anual growth, not being on Twitter will become the equivilent of a business not having a blog.

As an FYI if you click the retweet button below and retweet this post, your picture will show up as well as a link to your twitter account.