Micro blogging, as it is classified, is described by Wikipedia as:

“form of multimedia blogging that allows users to send brief text updates.”

Over the past few months Twitter has formed part of a large majority of the online community’s social realm. This quasi-public platform allows for members to “tweet” up to 140 characters and instantly reach their following which could be up to 2000 people (the initial limit is set to prevent spamming) “Tweets”, the online equivalent of an sms, can be “RT”, retweeted, and sent to the “retweeters”  following, thus having an exponential viral effect.

Twitter carries a cache of potential to reach your target market and best of all its free. That spells catch, there has to be a catch? Well, it depends how you want to look at it. The market is out there, receptive and eager to communicate and the platform is there, ready and waiting to be utilised. It all boils down to interfacing with that untapped market. Apps have been developed to do this but the ones out there are blunt instruments bashing away at the social dynamics, they serve their purpose (as social tools) but they create a mass flurry of clutter in a small space, constantly.

So Twitter is purely social and of no use to businesses, right? Wrong. Todd Dagres, founder of Spark Capital and one of the VCs that poured an additional $35 million into Twitter was quoted by ReadWriteWeb, saying: “All of a sudden there will be some changes that won’t undermine the experience or the vitality — but it will be pretty obvious how we’re going to monetize it.”

Twitter has the business potential; it has had 34.7% positive growth since last month (Compete.com), so now it’s all about having the right tools to reach the right people with the right message at the right time.

A post by TechCrunch highlighted the possibility of having vanity URLs on Facebook in the future.

Vanity URLs, in short, are the customised URLs of your page/blog on another community platform, like Facebook. They point directly to your page and dont conform to the hosts generated path i.e. www.facebook.com/[your businessname] instead of the path assigned by Facebook.

Though Facebook is allowing vanity URLs they have been limited to either bands, the super famous or business partners.

“Unfortunately we are not currently able to approve requests for vanity URLs (web addresses). The only Pages that presently have vanity URLs are bands and businesses that partnered with us for the initial launch of this new product. We hope to make these URLs available for everyone to have on their individual Page(s) in the future. When this feature is available, we will provide instructions on how to obtain a vanity URL on this help page.”

 I hope to see this come about sooner rather than later. It will be great for business to “customise” their current pages as well as taking your Facebook page offline onto business cards, letterheads and other offline branded material.

Is it really that important? Consider having, for example, http://www.facebook.com/formfunction, it is compact therefore brandable as well as clear and understandable. Compare it to the actual link: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/home.php?filter=pp. A lot less distinct. Vanity URLs also give ownership to the brand page. So to answer the question - yes, I think it is important, especially for your business and its online presence.

Besides, after the latest Facebook upgrade why isn’t it there? Twitter has it, Myspace has it and LinkedIn has it.

Lets hope Facebook plays catch-up and gives business the opportunity to stand loud and proud (and branded).

The iPhone is on its way to sunny South Africa and the excitement is already beginning to build. The news that the iPhone would be available in South Africa spread rapidly through the MSM and the local blogosphere. Some, however, have been sceptical as to the magnitude of the potential impact the release of the iPhone here will have - here is why they should be as excited as everyone else!

The iPhone has sold exceptionally well, with approx. 6 million units moved by its first anniversary this Sunday, the 29th. While perhaps not as incredible as a Steve Jobs keynote might imply this is still a serious feat - going from 0 to 6 million units shipped in 1 year is no joke - and the impact of the iPhone has been very significant. It has changed the way consumers who have experienced its interface perceive the mobile web (no longer clunky WAP but rather slick browsing via a small version of Safari) and stimulated significant innovation in the mobile device space. Furthermore, the new version of the iPhone which is to be released locally also sports 3G connectivity - making rich media browsing from a mobile device sound very attractive! Allan Kent (of Saatchi and Saatchi’s At Play) articulated his feeling that the iPhone is going to change the game for mobile applications: “The most important thing that I mentioned earlier is that I believe the iPhone interface will make mobile applications a lot more accessible to people.” This is definitely going to be the case, in fact we here at FormFunction would contend that it’s going to change more than just the game, but the entire context in which mobile application development takes place. Both web apps developed specifically for iPhones and native apps that are able to leverage the unique featureset provided by the iPhone SDK are going to finally start delivering on the promises of convergence that have been floating around for years.

Thus a large part of what the iPhone represents has yet to be unlocked: there is going to be an explosion of fascinating new applications for the device as the second year of the device’s existence unfolds. An interesting example of what can be achieved with a little work is Patrick Collison’s wikipedia on the iPhone project which yields as he says “the warm fuzzy feeling of having the sum of all human knowledge in your pocket.” Social functionality on the iPhone has already been shown to be successful with the widely acclaimed Facebook iPhone portal and much more innovation on this front is to be expected - some of which will certainly be coming from FormFunction’s side of the ring We’re looking forward to the South African iPhone launch and are excited to be part of SA’s next wave of mobile innovation: there’s no doubt that Apple’s device is a winner!

PS: Vodacom has set up a microsite for people interested in getting an iPhone when it launches locally to leave their details. Vodacom says it will get back to those who sign up “as soon as [the iPhone] becomes available.”