A German man with a typewriter is responsible for the entire existence of URL shorteners. Here’s how:

25 years ago, Friedhelm Hillebrand sat at typewriter in his home in Germany and typed out sentences and questions. Eventually he realized that most lines ended up with less than 160 characters. He decided that this number, 160, was “sufficient” for text based communication.

Hillebrand also happened to be the chairman of the nonvoice services committee in the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM). He pushed for, and got, the 160 character limit that we still use for SMS messaging on phones today. Unintentional Consequences

Moving forward a few years, a little site called Twitter decided that it was going to set it’s status update message size at 140 characters. Why? Because they wanted users to be able to see status updates on their cell phones via text message. Therefore to get the users name plus their message, they had to cut the length.

As Twitter grew, it’s purpose, focus, and usage changed to the point where sharing links became a major element of the service. However, many URLs were too long to include in tweets with any type of context.

Enter services like bit.ly or tinyurl which exist to substitute long URLs with short ones, making it possible to include in tweets.

And there you go. German man with typewriter to SMS character limit to Twitter character limit to bit.ly.

Here’s the original article from 5/09 in the L.A. Times with more background, etc.

Earlier today, the ever-wise CK noted that Twitter considers itself an “information network”, and that she agrees with that idea, in the grand sense. She also mentioned that many of us primarily use Twitter as a social tool, which is probably true too.

I agree with CK on both points actually. While Twitter may have grown into a legitimate information network (I get most of my news first from my TweetDeck), its growth has been spurred by the fuel of social interaction. Sort of a “Come for the conversation, stay for the news” type of situation. I think that as Twitter continues to evolve, it will be sharpened as a distributed information source, but it will retain it’s social foundation. Because, really, without it, what’s the big deal?

What say you, internets?

So if you’re reading this blog, I’m pretty damn positive that you noticed that Twitter and Facebook went down the other day. Funny how many forget (or just don’t know) that something just like the “Social Media Apocalypse” of 8/09 used to happen literally every week on Twitter.

And while the outage was relatively minor, there were ripple effects that went beyond people’s inability to tweet about their breakfast or to RT some social media link-bait.

Take a look at CPB’s new site. What happens when Twitter goes down? Is it really acceptable to lose 1/3 of your website’s content? And they’re not the only agency/company to rely on a 3rd party feed. I think that pulling in content from other places is great, but now you’ve got to worry about the stability of other sites.

Not that any of this is wrong. Just another thing to think about.

2) User Experience Design is both extremely intriguing and intimidating at the same time. While most types of design are concrete and finite, i.e. a the Mona Lisa is always going to look like that, UX is inherently transient and ephemeral. It’s the only type of design that re-invents itself with each experience or user.

3) We need to be careful to not turn social media into celebrity endorsements. I know the point is to “Influence the Influencers”, but when you give those people wild perks/free stuff, it doesn’t do anything for me. So some A-Lister liked their free meal? Where’s the connection? Why not spend that money and give all their readers a $5 coupon?

4) The only way to not be lumped in with spammers/auto-dm’ers/shady practitioners and others that give marketers a “bad name” is to go out of your way to make a good name for yourself. Be known for not only preaching the right thing, but for following through and doing the right thing too. Show people that you’re above all the crap that brings “us” down.

First off, it’s really hard to coherently follow someone who is live tweeting a speaker or a series of speakers. Like many of you, I have a lot of action in my feed. If you’re following hundreds/thousands of people, despite being hashtagged, there’s no sense of continuity. It get’s lost in the stream.

Piggybacking on that point is the fact that I don’t think live-tweeting does the event justice. There’s no context, no visuals (which good presos usually incorporate), no completeness. I think there’s so much more to these presentations, and while I’m grateful for the quotable nuggets that people pull out, it doesn’t really illuminate much.

But that’s just me. How do you feel about the whole thing?

While it’s not as long as some of the die-hard early adopters, I’ve been on Twitter for almost a year and a half. And in that time it seems like every few months there’s some sort of Earth-shattering, life-altering, mind-blowing change that SHAKES THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE WAY WE USE TWITTER FOREVER.

Seriously…

From the stability problems (does anyone remember that robot before the failwhale?), to Plurk (somewhere Beth Harte is shedding a tear), to the advent of Twitter as a customer service tool (@Comcastcares), to the stellar aps (Tweetdeck!) to the elections, to Ashton/CNN/Oprah. There’s always something new going on.

And while each of those things has been the cause of some hooplah for a short time, eventually we accept it and move on. But what people might lose sight of is the fact that Twitter might “change” another 31 times before it settles in. That’s just how developing mediums are. Think of it as your favorite chair. You’re gonna have to spend a lot of time sitting different ways before you get that perfect butt-groove (yes, I just went there).

And while the regular user just sits back and absorbs these changes, maybe enjoying one or two of them, casually mentioning it to their friends or family, all of us marketers/social media people/trend watchers/etc. are trying desperately to understand the changes, what it means, and how we can leverage the new playing field.

So take a minute, understand how the celebrity rush is going to “change” Twitter, because it will (Mack Collier and Jeremiah Owyang cover it well), and then get ready. Because in the next 45 days something will change Twitter again.

(jumping the shark…?)

If you don’t fit the bill, you can follow me here.

Twitter DM
Pro: Short. Good signal/noise ratio (except auto DMs). Not real time. Easy introduction medium. Good for cutting through the clutter of email.
Con: The Auto DM
Verdict: Best Communication Medium in The Universe

Instant Message
Pro: Great for real time, online conversation. High adoption.
Con: They know you’re there when you start IMing back.
Verdict: A personal favorite of mine, but once someone knows you’re around, you’re stuck. Hard to disappear/ignore/get back to someone when they know you’re sitting right there.

Email
Pro: Good for long, detailed messages. Permanently recorded. Not real time.
Con: Have you seen your inbox lately? Exactly.
Verdict: Oh email, savior of our age. The problem is that people’s inboxes are so overflowing that the signal to noise ratio is getting bad fast. Good but not great.

Phone
Pro: Not location specific. High participation rate. A step beyond written communication.
Con: Real time can be a problem when you don’t want to talk to someone.
Verdict: It’s up there. Hard to imagine life without the cell phone anymore. Don’t believe me? Run any episode of Seinfeld and give them cell phones. Kills half the jokes/scenarios.

Land Line
Pro: Get to talk in your PJ’s.
Con: Have to be home.
Verdict: Do people still use these? Really?

Morse Code
Pro: Able to send messages long distances. Keeps communication secret from spies.
Con: You have to freaking know Morse Code.
Verdict: Not bad – if you want to give the coordinates of an enemy submarine, I guess.

Carrier Pigeon
Pro: “Smart” message delivery. No minimum wage.
Con: Message limited to what you can physically attach to a pigeon. Possibility of looking like a hermit/conspiracy theorist while owning pigeons.
Verdict: Aside from owning pigeons, keeping pigeons, feeding pigeons, training pigeons, and attaching things to pigeons, it’s not that bad really.

Smoke Signals
Pro: Long distance. High badass-factor.
Con: Fire hazard. Not the best for indoor communication.
Verdict: I wouldn’t attempt without adult/Apache supervision.

Fax Machine
Pro: Able to send complex print documents anywhere in the world.
Con: That sound! It sounds like an electronic cat hopped up on Red Bull and trapped in a cardboard box.
Verdict: Occasionally useful, but my guess is email attachment is going to kill the fax.

Tin Cans & String
Pro: Cheap to obtain/make. Cute.
Con: For some reason it doesn’t work unless you’re six years old or homeless.
Verdict: I’m not sure this even works. Whose idea was this in the first place?

Bike Courier
Pro: Able to deliver larger physical objects. Faster than a larger delivery service for short ranges.
Con: Spandex and attitude.
Verdict: If you need those designs across town NOW!

Boom Box Serenade
Pro: High visibility. Large audience. Ability to work Billy Idol into everyday communication.
Con: High crazy factor.
Verdict: I’m guessing this has it’s applications, but no one needs “Rebel Yell” at 9:30 on a Monday.

1) Tweet Blasts
The most obvious way for Twitter to make some money is to offer a bulk tweet delivered to it’s user base. The way I would set this up is to offer a tweet to everyone ($$$), to a smaller random number of users ($$), and an even smaller random number of users ($). The best uses for this type of advertising would be the traditional products with mass-market appeal like movies, fast-food, or cars.

I know this is very “old marketing”, spray-and-pray type of stuff, but hey, if it pays the bills and keeps Twitter free without overdoing it, I’m all for it.

2) Targeted Tweet Blasts
This one is a little more focused, makes a little more sense, and would take a little more time than just general or random Tweet Blasts. The one play here would be to leverage people’s Bio information to target them based on things like location or interests. Terms like “Charleston, SC” or “avid gamer” could be used. This would make sense if you were promoting a local restaurant or a media (game, music, movie) release.

The other angle you could take, and this might be tough, is to pull a tweet cloud for each user. This way you can see that someone spends all their time talking about “Apple” or “Philadelphia Phillies” or “Snowboarding” even if it’s not in their Bio information.

3) Headliners
If you checked the web version of Twitter today, you would see a warning for a phishing scam above your timeline. This is, again, not much better than a billboard, but would still be a high profile place to put a one-line ad. One problem here is that it would only reach web users.

4) Tweet Cloud Contextual Ad Blocks
Now here’s a sweet, sweet internet advertising mashup. The first thing that would need to happen here is that Twitter would have to institute ad blocks on individual profiles. My best guess would be to put them on the right side of the timeline, as people usually do their custom background graphic on the left. Next they would have to figure out which users Tweet cloud to pull the data from. Is it the user of the profile that you’re visting? Or is it your data? And what happens if you’re not a Twitter user or have limited data?

5) Charge A Membership Fee
I’d rather it not come to this. But I’d pay it. Twitter is totally worth it.

Did I miss anything? Am I way off base? Let me know!

Note: I don’t necessarily endorse any/all of these ideas, it was just a brainstorm.