Since we’re heading to Digital ID World next week, we thought it might be interesting to show a demo of why virtual directories can help companies build social media driven applications. This post is a follow-up to my previous blog posts on “Virtualizing Social Networks” (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) by using a virtual directory to incorporate social media information into a virtual directory like Radiant Logic’s RadiantOne VDS. Our demo shows how you can leverage Twitter to promote products to your users based upon the people following and followed by the user.
Here is the general scenario. Company A is building a portal and would like to expose enhanced information to their customers. They are interested in enriching their user profiles by combining social network information into the data. This makes the information available in the portal more relevant for the users. They decide to start by incorporating information from Twitter into the system. This will allow them to promote products purchased by people following the user and whom the user is following. The following identity/data repositories are involved:
Enterprise Directory containing a list of all users in the portal
Order database
Twitter
One of the key requirements is that they want to minimize the application development costs and also position themselves for incorporating other social networks. They decided to leverage a virtual directory to create a view into the identity and data repositories which allows them to easily consume this information within their application. This also allows them to incorporate additional social networks without making other application changes.
Our demo highlights how you can easily incorporate data from Twitter and combine the data with information coming from both the enterprise directory and the order database without needing to make significant application changes or modify the underlying data sources. The following diagram highlights the logical design:
We used the following approach to create the demo:
Created an Enterprise Directory with the list of customers
Joined the customer directory to the order database to get a list of products purchased by the user
Joined the customer directory to Twitter to get the list of followers and who the user is following
Set the Twitter handles of other users in the VDS store to Twitter handles that match so that we show the relationships (note that we could use something like ICS to do more sophisticated matching without necessarily needed the matching Twitter ID)
The demo shows how to create two different directory tree structures for consumption by the portal:
The “Following View” shows the orders purchased by the user and the people following or being followed by the user on Twitter. The “Purchased View” extends this information to show what products have been purchased across the user’s social graph.
As a sneak peak, here’s a video walking you through what we are showing:
Charlie asked me to take a break from the “wordy” posts I’ve been doing and write “something that any monkey can understand” (his words, not mine). So, let’s give it a shot!
For employers, Twitter—where users post updates, or “tweets,” of no more than 140 characters—offers one more way to find and attract candidates, and a cheaper alternative to big online job boards. It also helps companies target social-media-savvy job hunters and convey an innovative image. For job seekers, Twitter offers the chance to interact one-on-one with companies’ recruiters and can be more convenient than job boards.
No doubt Twitter is a great way to engage with recruiters and potential employers, but how do you find what you’re looking for AND keep track of it? That’s where ChatterBox comes in:
Create a ChatterBox focused on the job search terms and/or job feed handles you’re interested in
Customize your Categories to distinguish different types of roles or specific areas of expertise
Customize your Status to reflect where you are in the process (initial response, sent resume, etc)
Create as many similar ChatterBoxes as you’d like
There you have it- a quick, easy way to manage your Twitter-based job search and know exactly what you’ve responded to.
My previous post described how every company can benefit from using ChatterBox. Today’s post will focus on a specific type of company: the Public Relations (PR) firm.
Before we begin, let’s quickly review what ChatterBox is all about. A ChatterBox is a shared team workspace built around a Twitter search. The Twitter search itself can be a simple list of terms and users, or it can use advanced search operators. Once you have Tweets coming into your ChatterBox, you can:
Categorize them
Tag them
Prioritize them
Assign them to other users who have access to the ChatterBox
Respond to them via the Twitter handle of your choosing
Extract what’s happening in the ChatterBox via RSS
You can create as many ChatterBoxes as you want, and you can share them with whomever you want. The Tweets that get pulled into a ChatterBox are searchable and accessible for as long as you’d like them to be.
When we began sharing our ChatterBox concept with folks outside of the company, we noticed a consistent pattern of people predicting that PR firms would love the app. These predictions were based on a couple of key features:
Each ChatterBox is its own universe that can be shared with a unique set of users. This fits perfectly with a PR firm that’s assigning a distinct set of users to listen and engage on behalf of clients.
A ChatterBox can be shared with anyone. All you need to provide is an e-mail address. We don’t mandate that the person you’re sharing with must be part of your company or your e-mail domain. This is what makes sharing with clients, partners, and service providers possible.
Let’s get one thing settled before I continue- I am not a PR professional or an expert on what makes a good PR firm. Most of the information I know about the industry comes from blogs (PerkettPRsuasion.com is a favorite of mine) and Twitter. But part of the inspiration for ChatterBox came from this Jeremiah Owyang post in the fall of last year. While commenting on what PR firms can do to enhance existing functions, Jeremiah writes:
Be a filter for clients: There’s a tremendous amount of noise now being created, creating an opportunity for PR folks to filter, sort, and prioritize what matters. You’ll need both access and understanding of brand monitoring tools as well as the ability to see patterns in the noise.
ChatterBox certainly enables the filtering that Jeremiah mentions. As an added benefit PR professionals can manage multiple clients through a single interface, ensuring that the proper internal AND external users are able to participate.
Let’s use the example of Roger, a PR professional who is assigned to listen and engage on behalf of 3 companies:
MufflerStop, an auto service center
Ready2Wear, a women’s apparel designer
WarningTrack, a sports bar chain
Roger works with a team of 3 other Account Managers to services these 3 clients. He’s able to easily listen, engage, and collaborate on behalf of these clients through ChatterBox. Here’s an example of how easy it is to set this up:
ChatterBox #1: MufflerStop
Roger creates a ChatterBox focused on generic mentions of the word “muffler” and his client, MufflerStop. He configures Category values of ‘Positive’, ‘Neutral’, and ‘Negative’ for sentiment analysis, and ‘Opportunity’ for any chances to promote his client.
He sets Respond From to ‘Users can only respond from a Twitter account of my choosing’ and enters the credentials for MufflerStop’s Twitter handle.
He invites fellow Account Manager Sara to participate in the ChatterBox. He also invites Charles, who is MufflerStop’s Community Manager.
After the save, Roger has created a workspace that provides full visibility to his client.
ChatterBox #2: Ready2Wear
Roger creates a ChatterBox focused on what’s happening in the women’s apparel space. His client is brand new, so their approach is to learn by listening and engage with people who show a passion for their space and their company. He enters search terms like ‘handbag’, ‘purse’, and of course their name ‘Ready2Wear’.
He sets Respond From to ‘Users can respond from any Twitter account’ since Ready2Wear prefers to respond from multiple handles depending on the topic area.
He invites his colleague Sam as well as two members of Ready2Wear’s customer care staff to participate.
After the save, Roger also sends an RSS feed for assigned items from the ChatterBox to Ready2Wear’s CEO Jennifer, who is an avid fan of Google Reader. This way Jennifer is able to keep track of interactions with the click of a button.
ChatterBox #3: WarningTrack
WarningTrack is primarily interested in tracking the Twitter promotions they run. To start, Roger creates a ChatterBox with a single search term (’WarningTrack’). In the future they intend to take advantage of Twitter’s location-based search to engage with sports fans in the areas where they have restaurant locations.
He sets Respond From so that all responses will originate from the WarningTrack Twitter handle.
He invites his colleague Sherry to participate. WarningTrack’s community team prefers to monitor progress via RSS feed readers on their iPhones.
Using ChatterBox, Roger & Sherry will be able to tag and track the success of the promotions and contests they’ve recommended to WarningTrack.
That’s all there is to it! In just a few minutes time, Roger has:
Created collaborative workspaces for 3 clients
Simplified client management by sharing access to the ChatterBoxes with only those colleagues who are responsible for the accounts
Given his clients access to monitor progress through either of 2 channels: direct participation or RSS
Minimized the chance of overlap when multiple people are listening and engaging from a single Twitter handle
I’d be interested to hear from PR folks about the use case I just described. Are there additional feature you’d like to see that are specific to your industry? Please leave a comment or reach out to me with your ideas on Twitter!
Todd & I traveled down to NYC this week to attend Jeff Pulver’s 140 Characters Conference (#140conf on Twitter) and show off ChatterBox. We manned a table in the exhibitors’ area and were fortunate to chat with many of the attendees as they circulated around the venue. As is usually the case when attending a Twitter-focused event, we met a diverse set of people from a variety of different industries. The common theme among them was that they were passionate about social networking and excited to learn about innovative new apps like ChatterBox.
Some memorable moments from our trip included:
Dragging a bag full of ChatterBox monkeys through the streets of Manhattan. Some companies might have opted to ship their conference giveaways to the venue, but we self-funded ventures think differently. (Note- the XL L.L. Bean Rolling Adventure Duffle makes an excellent monkey transportation device)
Giving up the chair from our demo table for use by Ann Curry. We didn’t actually hand her the chair, but I think we should still get credit for the gesture. Watch this video and you’ll see our chair being put to good use!
Todd being interviewed by BBC Radio Five Live on how Twitter is impacting the situation in Iran. You can listen to the interview by clicking this link (slide the track to around the 21 minute mark).
Todd being interviewed for Wednesday evening’s episode of CNBC’s Fast Money. Unfortunately his interview did not make the cut, but we acted as extras in a couple of the clips and the ChatterBox signage did make the air.
Getting to demo ChatterBox for a variety of influential Twitterers, including Chris Brogan & Clayton Morris.
Having a lively conversation with the world’s fastest talking female, @francapo. She just might be a perfect spokesperson for ChatterBox one day!
Here’s a quick recap of the show in slideshow form:
So, ChatterBox has been in private beta now for three weeks and things are rolling along nicely. We’ve been learning a lot since the launch to our beta users. So far the feedback has been very positive and we have been lucky to be able to attend some great events.
After our initial launch at the 140 Twitter Conference (#140tc), we were invited to attend Mass Innovation Nights. A huge thanks to Bobbie Carlton for organizing such a great event and for giving us the opportunity to participate. All I can say is that I am never going anywhere without a few ChatterBox monkeys. People love screaming monkeys. If you create a ChatterBox for the #MIN3 hash tag and the word monkey, you’ll see what I mean. I think I might need to invest in the Super Fly Monkey company!
As with all initial releases, there are some things that we need to improve in the application. I thought it might be useful to share some of these items. We’re working on planning the next release now. Aside from addressing some of the general usability items from this release (and some exciting enhancements), we want to make sure that your feedback is included. So, please send us anything you can think of and we’ll start to factor it in to our plans.
So, here’s the list of things we have found so far:
1. Expect a lot more data than you think!
So, believe or not, there happens to be quite of bit of content on Twitter. During 140tc, we opened up private beta invites for 24 hours and got about 70 users signing up to use the app. After 24 hours we found that about 10% of the users on the system had already accounted for 1.2 million conversations pulled-in from Twitter. Now for some that may not seem like much, but for us those numbers made us a little concerned. We want to have quite a few users on the system and to scale up to that amount of capacity over a short period of time will pose a challenge for us self-funded start-ups. So, we decided to make a couple of changes to the application. The first change was to put in a limit for the number of conversations a ChatterBox will pull in for that day. This helps by limiting content for very broad ChatterBoxes that may not be in use regularly. We also added an option to restart the ChatterBox conversation collection if needed.
Personally, I don’t think this solution is optimal. We’ll be improving this over the next release to give you a more “live” feel to the information and to try to take out limitations like this one from the system.
2. The workflow isn’t working out exactly as planned
We love the fact that when a conversation comes in to a ChatterBox, it’s easy to put that conversation into workflow and categorize and tag, prioritize and assign those conversations to other ChatterBox participants. The UI makes it easy to get to the conversations, respond and then update them with additional information. However, it’s not so easy to see which items you have already reviewed and also which items have been updated since you last looked at that ChatterBox. While we have a number in the ChatterBox tab for “untouched” conversations, it’s not all that clear what that number means. Also, in looking at the conversations, it’s not blatantly obvious which items have been updated since we present the conversations in a collapsed view. Notifications fall into the same camp. We underestimated the value of email notifications. That’s quickly become the #1 piece of feedback on our UserVoice forum. So, RSS is great, but email is better for notifications. We’ll get that addressed.
3. It’s a team app with a limited sense of team
One of the main ChatterBox features we’re proud of is the ability to collaborate with other members of a team in the management of conversations. It’s a powerful capability that let’s teams see the full trail of conversations and respond easily from a single account (or individual accounts if desired). One problem. You can’t really tell who is participating with you in the ChatterBox. If you are the admin of the ChatterBox, you can see who you have invited and who has accepted, but as a participant, the only way to really know is to look in the assignment drop-down. This will change in the next version. It was one of those oversights that will be addressed.
Well, that’s all for now. Keep the feedback rolling-in. We’re very excited to have people using the app and we’re on a mission to make sure that it provides the best user experience possible.
As we approach our open beta launch, I thought it would be nice to follow-up on an item we wrote about previously. In our post “Meeting Jeremiah’s Developer Challenge,” we set out to meet a challenge for a set of functionality described by Jeremiah Owyang. Jeremiah created a post issuing a challenge to developers to create a crowd managed feed reader:
I’m happy to let you know that we achieved the goals described in our previous post. The challenge was to create a solution that addressed the following pain points:
“Finding people on Twitter, then following them is already a challenge. Sharing your hard earned list takes time. I deal with a lot of executives at companies, that want to quickly scan the topics in their industry, or see what their employees, customers, and competitors are doing. Searching by keyword isn’t sufficient. Carter Lusher has this large Twitter list of analysts, but in order to see their streams, adding each one is a manual process.”
You can easily meet this requirement with our new application. ChatterBox is a collaboration platform used to discover information pertaining to topics of interest on Twitter. An intelligent, single point of access, this web-based interface pulls in conversations and creates a collaborative workspace that provides topical views of information – along with features such as personalized views, assignment, categorization, prioritization, notifications and tagging – creating a more streamlined process to listen, organize and respond to conversations. As a result, social media power users and corporate teams can become far more effective in participating in relevant conversations, providing excellent customer service, and generating stronger business leads.
Jeremiah wanted to achieve the following use cases which we allow out of the box:
I want to track all analysts in my industry, then I could [give] my executives a single URL so they can observe
Give a sales rep a single webpage to see all the tweets coming out of their client
Professional to quickly track all their industry counterparts tweets
Have further features that allow very large feeds to segment by a variety of filters perhaps by location, popularity, and other metadata
Be easy to use (feedback so far on this has been very positive)
There are some other items identified as requirements that we’re still considering. This includes things like public views, additional data sources, ChatterBox access requests and automated prioritization. If you would like to try out the private beta, please use the Contact form to request access. We would love to get your feedback.
Well, I am back from our launch at the 140 Twitter Conference (#140tc) in Mountain View, CA. Charlie dispatched me to represent the product and what we are doing. I got to meet a bunch of great people and also received a nice reception for the product. We can’t thank you all enough for being included and the opportunity to spend some time to show you what we have put together. The Parnassus Group put on a great event.
People had some good things to say about ChatterBlox. Here is quote by @justinjwilliams I captured from Twitter (using ChatterBox of course):
People also loved the monkeys we brought as our giveaway. Apologies to everyone for the #MONKEYFAIL during the keynote where one of Charlie’s brethren went off accidently.
Attendees found lots of great uses for the monkeys (aside from a screaming slingshot). @krystyl wrote:
We also presented at the launchpad session. It was a nerve racking 5 minutes, but I think we well positioned the application and the demo went smoothly. The audience was great and the other presenter showed off some really interesting tools. Definitely check out TwittyLinks.com by Loren West. TwittyLinks is the fastest way to tweet about a web page. One click lets you tweet without leaving the page you’re on. Loren was very kind to take this picture of me presenting at the launchpad session:
Well, we’re busy taking a look at all the feedback and suggestions for improvements and are building out the app for full open beta. Expect to see open signup at the end of June. In the meantime, use our Contact Us form to request immediate access. I can’t wait to see everyone again at the next event!
There is no doubt that Social CRM is the future for traditional CRM. CRM tools are swarming to build functionality to monitor your brand across the various social networks. There are lots of great blog articles out there discussing this topic, including posts by Jeremiah Owyang (”The Future of Twitter: Social CRM”), Brent Leary (”Social CRM in Pictures….and Words” and “Social CRM: Not Your Father’s Customer Relationship Management“) and many others. I really like Brent’s definition of Social CRM which is as follows:
“Social CRM adds a whole new dimension to the traditional view of customer relationship management. The focus is undoubtedly on people and not technology. It’s about joining the ongoing conversations our customers and prospects are already engaged in — not trying to control them.”
The key statement to me from Brent’s post is about joining ongoing conversations and the value in building relationships. However, what is missing here is the fact that this is still CRM, social or not. The ultimate goal is to manage your customers, partners, etc. to obtain the most value you can out of that relationship and to build that 360 degree view of the customer. Don’t get me wrong. CRM has value. Social media needs a different approach, though. Companies should come to these conversations as participants and not overseers using tools to monitor the social networks to help fix a customer’s problem or clean-up after a PR debacle. The real answer is to give users the tools to manage these relationships and not just the organizations themselves. Users should have the capability to share information with their vendors on their terms and not the vendor’s terms. These tools should still give vendors the ability to easily participate in those conversations and extract the value needed from them, but I do not see the same value for Twitter providing the Social CRM capabilities that Jeremiah outlines. Twitter’s value comes from the users and not the brands. Twitter should instead focus on providing improved capabilities for users to be able to express their preferences and issues. Admittedly, I’m still not sure how you monetize this any more that what they have now, though.
So, is this Vendor Relationship Management (VRM)? Doc Searls leads ProjectVRM at Harvard University to support the development of VRM tools and methodologies. Wikipedia defines VRM as:
“VRM, or Vendor Relationship Management, is the reciprocal of CRM or Customer Relationship Management. VRM describes a set of tools, technologies and services that help individuals go to market and manage relationships with vendors. In turn, vendors who align themselves to these tools, technologies and services will have the opportunity to build better relationships with their customers.”
Sounds like it. Or does it? VRM advocates putting tools in the user’s hands. VRM also describes transactions, relationships, conversations, user-based control, etc. Paul Greenberg presents a good case for VRM and Social CRM being the same thing in his “Vendor Relationship Management: Jumpin’ On The Three Wheeled Bandwagon” post. VRM, however, has its own set of challenges. In Graham Hill’s post on “Four Fallacies of Vendor Relationship Management” he outlines a strong set of reason why VRM is overly extreme. Ultimately it comes down to the management of information and whether or not the VRM economic model works. So, perhaps VRM is not the answer for social media either. This makes sense if Social CRM is the same as VRM as Paul describes.
So what capabilities really are needed for social media tools so that both users and organizations can get the most value. Here is my high-level feature list for this new type of tool:
Designed for users and not organizations
Organizations should be equal participants in the conversations and not observers
Inherently free so that everyone can gain value with value-added services provided on top of the core system
Exposes interfaces so that organizations can extract data approved by the users
Social network independent
Perhaps this is what Graham calls “Customer Managed Relationships?” I’m not sure. I do know that this type of tool needs to focus on collaboration more than just relationship management. Perhaps the best name for this is Social Collaboration Management instead.
While Twitter provides a great platform for global information, how do you get to just the subset of information relevant to your local area. The answer is a system of Twitter distribution hubs (a.k.a. spoke-hub distribution paradigm). The idea is not a new one. Distribution hubs are used across the board for a multitude of purposes, including airline flight patterns, shipping, networking and many other reasons. According to Wikipedia, this distribution model is defined as:
“The hub-and-spoke distribution paradigm (or model or network) is a system of connections arranged like a chariot wheel, in which all traffic moves along spokes connected to the hub at the center. The model is commonly used in industry, in particular in transport, telecommunications and freight, as well as in distributed computing.”
Wikipedia uses this picture as the way to show how this works for airlines. So, in this example Denver serves as the hub for getting to and from place that do not have direct connections.
Twitter does not have a direct model for creating these types of relationships, but it does have a virtual way of setting up distribution points- search and hash tags. While Twitter’s search operators page at http://search.twitter.com/operators lists two operators that could apply (near and within), those work in the opposite direction. “Near” finds all Tweets sent from a specific area and “within” constrains the search to a specific distance away. This would be interesting for an aggregation approach, but since we are trying to distribute messages to the spokes and not consolidate messages from the spokes, we need a different approach.
Fortunately, a standard has emerged around using hash tags (#some_topic) which allow people to find things around a common topic without having to follow a specific handle to be notified of the information. You can then use Twitter search to find all messages related to that topic. While not as convenient as near and within, a hash tag model could be applied to describe messages destined for specific areas. You could also tack on other tags to further refine the distribution path. Since these tags are currently freeform, a standard would be needed to ensure that everyone leveraged common formats for the tags. The critical piece here is that Twitter searches can be made into RSS feeds. So, I can easily set up a search for a specific hash tag and am notified when a new item matches that search.
So, how would this work. The first step would be to establish a set of hub information providers. Next, you would establish a set of Twitter searches based upon a hash tag specific to each spoke. Using a tool like RSS to Twitter (no affiliation) you could feed the results of those search to Twitter handles specifically set up for the spoke location. Users could follow the spoke to then be notified of the specific items of interest.
There are a multitude of sample uses for this type of a model (e.g. local advertising), but a more interesting use could be to create a localized emergency broadcast system for things like Amber alerts, weather emergencies, or other types of local notifications. The system would look something like this:
An organization like the Homeland Security Department would operate as the hub sending a stream of messages tagged appropriately for distribution. The messages could embed links and pictures for longer text or photos of missing children, persons of interest, etc. Local agencies would then follow the spoke accounts to get the subset of information relevant for that specific area.
The benefits of this approach include the following:
Notification logic can be centralized to a single point of access which simplifies distribution
Instant global reach
Little development is required to integrate with Twitter
Twitter is easily accessible by mobile devices
Content can easily by filtered down to a specific interest areas
There are a few drawbacks to this approach. The main drawback is the stability of Twitter itself. Without a reliable mechanism for distributing these messages the usefulness of leveraging Twitter in this fashion is extremely limited. The second drawback is that spoke-to-spoke (or point-to-point) messages can not easily be sent directly since all communication flows through the hub. Fortunately, Twitter provides an easy mechanism to forward messages. A spoke could send a message back to the hub with a hash tag for another location. The hub would then re-tweet the message and it would be picked up by the other spoke. Another thing to keep in mind is that traffic would be bottlenecked by the hub account. So, if things like API limits were not lifted, message distribution could be delayed. Additionally, without a standard for hash tags, coordination across the network would incur a high level of overhead.
Overall, this is another idea to keep in mind when looking at notification systems. Email and automated phone calling have already greatly improved response times and awareness of incidents. Leveraging Twitter in this model is yet another improvement.
As the web moved more towards mash-ups and other forms of heterogenous applications, there is a need to reliably send messages between these applications leveraging a common interface. While there are services out there that provide Internet-based message queuing, like OnlineMQ, cloudMQ, Amazon Simple Queue Service and others, I think another mechanism is staring us in the face. In looking at Twitter and how tweets are distributed and queued, in essence this really could be a Collaboration Message Queue. Twitter is mainly focused on human interactions. Could it be used as a platform for non-human collaboration?
“… a message queue is a software-engineering component used for interprocess communication or inter-thread communication within the same process. It uses a queue for messaging – the passing of control or of content. Message queues provide an asynchronous communications protocol, meaning that the sender and receiver of the message do not need to interact with the message queue at the same time. Messages placed onto the queue are stored until the recipient retrieves them.”
Twitter definitely provided the component necessary to use it as a message queue:
RESTful API
Ability to send short messages
Messages can be broadcast to all listeners
Messages can be replied to or directed to specific listeners
Messages are queued until picked-up by the listener
(Very) limited security in that updates can be kept private to only specifically approved listeners
Ability to search messages (may or may not matter)
“Listeners” above would normally be referred to as “followers” for human collaboration.
So, what would a Twitter-based Collaboration Message Queue look like:
Each application leverages the Twitter API to speak with Twitter. The sending application authenticates to Twitter and initiates a conversation. The conversation can be broadcast to all of the listeners, sent specifically to one listener using an @reply/mention or sent privately to one listener using a direct message. The receiving application also authenticates to Twitter and checks for messages in its queue. Those message can then be read off the queue. Since the order of the messages in maintained, asynchronous communication is possible. Since there are multiple services that integrate with Twitter for sending binary information (think TwitPic) those API’s could also be leveraged to send non-text based messages.
A use case for this might include using Twitter as a way to federate site communication. If, for example, you have an application that sits out at your customer site and want an easy way for your application to send and receive inter-application messages, the Twitter API provides an extremely easy mechanism of accomplishing this. In the example of a workflow-based application, perhaps you want to assign a task outside of your company to a partner also using the same software. The application could send the task into the receiving application’s Twitter queue. The receiving application could then acknowledge the receipt of the task with a response and easily communicate back when the task is completed. Since the application would use the same language, each site is able to establish a dialog with the other sites.
To implement this type of model, each participant application would do the following:
Register a Twitter handle
Mark their updates as private
Each new participant follows the initial participant
The initial participant accepts the follow and follows the requesting participant back
The participants can now send messages into each other using the mechanisms called out above. Additionally, all participants will see broadcasts across the system. Using re-tweets, conversations happening between specific participants could be forwarded on to other participants allowing certain participants to act as distribution hubs.
I am unsure as to the usefulness of this approach. While this allows non-humans to collaborate with little new code, message limits of 140 characters and the fact that conversation security is limited lessen the overall value. Messages longer than 140 characters could be broken down and chunked across multiple messages. Since order is maintained, the listener could put the message pieces back together relatively simply.
I’m fairly sure that Twitter will mainly be a human collaboration platform, but if they’re looking to find some other ways to leverage their infrastructure, you never know. Maybe non-human social networks are the future.
So, ChatterBox has been in private beta now for three weeks and things are rolling along nicely. We’ve been learning a lot since the launch to our beta users. So far the feedback has been very positive and we have been lucky to be able to attend some great events.
After our initial launch at the 
it’s not all that clear what that number means. Also, in looking at the conversations, it’s not blatantly obvious which items have been updated since we present the conversations in a collapsed view. Notifications fall into the same camp. We underestimated the value of email notifications. That’s quickly become the #1 piece of feedback on our UserVoice 
As we approach our open beta launch, I thought it would be nice to follow-up on an item we wrote about previously. In our post “
Well, I am back from our launch at the 
we brought as our giveaway. Apologies to everyone for the #MONKEYFAIL during the keynote where one of Charlie’s brethren went off accidently.
Wikipedia uses this picture as the way to show how this works for airlines. So, in this example Denver serves as the hub for getting to and from place that do not have direct connections.
