Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Twitter and the Nature of Time

I have always thought one very intriguing aspect of Twitter was the fact that it's a completely different "product" depending on where you live and what time it is.

On a shelf, Tide is always Tide, Heinz Ketchup is always Heinz Ketchup, and anywhere in the world a Coke is a Coke is a Coke. Brands you can count on to deliver a solid, unchanging brand experience, but not so with Twitter.

You know the time zone math. As I just tweeted at 6:00am in Boston, "It's primetime for Europe, late for Middle East, dawn for NewYork/DC/Boston and ZZZZZZ for CA." If I go on at the end of my day, Europe is mostly gone, California is in full swing and we're getting the Pacific Rim in PJ's added to the show.

It's something I love about Twitter. It's a product which is both public and generic, but private and intimate. It is quiet and tame in my mornings, sometimes wild and brawling in my late day, but whatever time you go on, it's filled with the daily energy of people across that very wide "world WIDE web" you've heard so much about.

Picture Credit: Not sure who took this picture of (from left to right, Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone) but it lives at this link.