TwitBook - no, they are no married yet.

Take a short glance at any of the feeds on the wires today, and it is obvious that we, the media and the whole online world are obsessed with Twitter and Facebook (or Twitbook for short). It may be something connected with the lack of real innovation in the industry right now, or the result of cult of celebrity. These guys are the internet superstars, and just like real celebrities, we want to know everything last piece of gossip about their lives.

On one level I get this. I use both Facebook and Twitter. I do not claim to be a Twitbookaholic, but I use them both everyday and I enjoy reading the stuff people post and share. On another level, however, I cannot help thinking that like every industry, our one is going through just another phase of becoming more mature. It is not a technology driven phenomena - Twitbook is not technically difficult to do - it is driven by a need for individuals to continually validate the investment in time they make online. Today our investment is repaid in followers, fans and friends. We measure success by the number of these we accumulate, and we revel in the fact that we have a greater number than the next person.

In my opinion (and looking on the dark side a little) Twitbook is actually more about reinforcing the social strata in our societies. It is not democratising technology - it is stratification technology. Every follower, fan and friend helps to define you as a person more closely than any information on your surfing habits could. The friendwork/fanwork/followerwork you create contains every strong and weak signal about who you are as you create groups with whom you share interests, birth place, schooling, work habits, hobbies, opinions. Going forward someone clever is going to work out how to use these friendworks to make traditional marketing redundant and find new ways to subtly influence your purchasing habits. Luckily, that still has not happened - or at least I am not aware of it - but perhaps thats the point ;).

Is there something else going on?

Actually, stratification is good. It helps to create true communities of interest, and these communities are sharing stuff online that they find useful, fun, interesting and creative. Today, more than at any other point in human existence, you can influence a vast network of people with a single post, a new idea or a fantastic new widget. Yes, we have had the opportunity of posting pages on the web for 15+ years, but Twitbook takes this to a different level - with personal friendwork publishing. They have done this by removing some of the challenges to connecting with people and making it super simple to publish.

I think this is another sign of the demystification of the web. Once a place largely for internet professionals to publish pages, it is now dominated by ordinary joes publishing more content in a single day than was posted in a week 10 years ago. Twitbook is making it easier and everybody likes it when things get easier. Personally I want this ease of production to go further - I would like to make it possible for the Twitbookers to spend time creating something more creative than a link. Thats what is driving our actions in HammerKit.

Twitbook - is it a training ground?

Twitbook is the ultimate training ground for getting more and more of us interacting online. It makes it easy and it is fun. From my experience, this type of mass phenomena is going to create a desire, a passion even, to do more online. The fun will soon fade and tweeting will seem twee - and those who do it will want to do something more adventurous. My fear is that the legacy of Twitbook will be a marketing device that was dressed up as an essential service. My hope is that all of this creative energy and willingness to share is turned into new online innovations that have real meaning and longevity.