Twitter? I Hardly Know...

Earlier this week, Chris Brogan let me know about Twitter, a new SMS-driven service brought to you by the people who made Odeo and Blogger.

I learned about the service following a management buyout of Odeo's assets by Blogger cofounder Evan Williams and Biz Stone, which feels kind of odd. Web 1.0 meets Web 2.0 and then some!

And as a half-assed member of Dodgeball, I'm torn.

Twitter does a lot of what Dodgeball does, so I'm feeling some reluctant feature replication angst. But so far I've wanted to use Twitter in ways I don't use Dodgeball.

I use Dodgeball to tell people where I am, hoping that they'll join me -- and only when third, fourth, and fifth wheels aren't unwelcome. I use Yelp, which isn't SMS'd based -- yet; come on people! -- to let people know where I've been and where they should go.

How do I use Twitter? True to their mission, accidentally and incidentally enough, to let people know what I'm doing. Right now.

If you check out my Twitter history, such as it is, you'll see that it's all here I am, what I'm doing, what I'm thinking kind of stuff.

True, I could easily use Dodgeball, which already has a baked-in friends list (for me, at least). I have very few friends in Twitter so far, and half of them (one of two) are skeptical of the service's need -- to send such shout outs.

Dens does this all the time, and to good effect. But I'm not sure I want such updates on my phone, persistently... and constantly.

So far, I like Twitter's on-page accumulation, even though I'm starting to feel some need for phone alerts (which I just signed up for) -- and to wonder why there's no contextual advertising on the Twitter pages. (Turns out there is; it's just very subtle. Give me a sidebar online, and you'll be in the clear, Ev!)

Will I eventually abandon Twitter for Dodgeball in terms of mental updates -- vs. physical updates? -- perhaps, but probably not. Do I wish there were a way to unify all of these things? Hells yeah.

Google should buy Odeo and Twitter, merge the latter's IM and other functionality with Dodgeball, augment Google video by way of YouTube with Google Audio vis a vis podcasts, and rock the casbah.

Until then, you should send the following message to shortcode 40404 -- the best shortcode ever:

follow h3athrow

Seriously. I want more Twitter friends. And I need to find a way to pull my Twitter updates into Media Diet. Then you could know where I am, where I've been, what I'm thinking about, etc. -- all in one place.