ClubW Blog

In its first incarnation, I loved this simple app and wrote about it here. For anyone who is familiar with Twitter, they will know that it is impossible to navigate through one’s followers is extremely tiresome. (The twitter web interface displays 20 followers per page, most recent follows first - What were they thinking?)

What I initially liked about the Twitter Mosaic tool from Sxoop was that it was an instant step-up as an Interface. Presenting all follower’s graphically in a compact format lets my brain do the walking without unnecessary clicks and scrolling through pages and pages of lists. I was so impressed with this aspect, that it has been taken on-board for a project of my own. (Good luck suing me @Walter).

Since the first version that I saw 3 or 4 weeks ago, Twitter Mosaic has grown arms and legs. Money shaped ones in the form of personalised mugs, T-Shirts, Business cards and shopping bags. An excellent progression.

As I see it, Walter could be the first man on the planet to actually make a profit from Microblogging. (Even Google couldn’t manage that with Jaiku!). He has (possibly) done this through extremely low costs (he is but one man) and an extremely saleable product.

Are personalised T-Shirts, Business Cards, mugs etc… based on Twitter really that desirable? lets look at it:

• Twitter is all ego. (”Whats my Follower/Followee ratio?” pre-occupies 90% of twitter users).

• Twitter is the ultimate in personal micro-branding. Everybody has a little soap-box on which to sell themselves, and the market can buy it (follow) or move on.

• Now we attach personal merchandise - Oh yes, I’ll have some of that please.

This isn’t “Twitter Merchandise”, This is “Me merchandise”.

The problems:

• The site looks awful. It may be simple and restrained - but on any gauge of aesthetics, it would have to be considered pig-ugly.

• It doesn’t work that well. Errors are common-place. Twitter’s API limits are also an issue.

• The purchasing-process is confusing, cumbersome and ugly. (You must register with the merchandise provider in order to purchase - 11 fields and one click and that’s before payment information is requested).

Buzz-Potential

Twitter has taken the Online-Viral phenomenon and decreased its lifespan by a factor of 10*. If someone links to something they like on Twitter, and someone else likes it, then, you get Retweets etc rippling across Twitter in minutes or hours. (As opposed to days and weeks with old viral email).

The Twitter Mosaic already had a good chance of achieving this. I know that @adamostrow, Editor-in-chief of the Mashable technology blog referred to it in a tweet 11 days ago. He has nearly 5000 followers - Not bad exposure.

So why isn’t Twitter Mosaic the buzz of Twitter?

1. Aesthetics - Fail.

2. Usability - Fail.

Both of these are pre-requisites to Twitter Mosaic achieving its potential.

If Sxoop doesn’t resolve these soon, someone else will, somewhere else.

How to resolve them:

1. Spend 10K on the look of the site.
2. Get a better Order-fulfilment process. Outsource it but make it look seamless with Twitter Mosaic.
3. Get Twitter inc. to love it. DM @kevinthau, Twitter’s new business development manager and offer him an immediate royalty. There’s no loss of IP here - He would do this too if he had the time. Offer him an immediate solution and make him look good in front of his new bosses. Oh, and get them to put you on the Whiter-than-white API white list.
4. Become “Twitter Merchandise” - Expand the stock, mousemats, Baby-grows, Car stickers. Suck all the air out of this space before someone else attempts to set up.

This should be Cork’s Twitterfone of 2009.

- Anthony

*Source: My head.