Category Archives: Predictions

Prediction: Lifecasting With Your Camera Phone

Prediction:
A year from now we will be using our camera phones (in video mode) to “lifecast” selected events to a network of friends. It’ll work something like this:

Me:
Go to camera phone mode and hit a broadcast option. Optionally include a description of the event – e.g. “My son is walking for the first time.”

My Friends:
Receive a text message that I’m broadcasting an event called “My son is walking for the first time.” Even better, they would hear about it through Twitter. They can click a link to watch the event in real-time. If they decline, they can come back later to watch it on the web. All of my lifecast events would be on that web page, similar to a personalized YouTube channel. Only my friends would be able to view the videos unless I designate them as public.

There will be all kinds of products built around this – lanyards to carry the cell phone so that you can do hands-free broadcasting from you point of view, tiny camera attachments/extensions that can be clipped on (e.g. to a baseball hat like Justin.tv), car dashboard mounts to allow you to broadcast as you’re driving your car, etc.

So who’s going to build this? Or am I just drinking too much Justin.tv Kool-Aid? Here’s Justin describing his vision for the future of Justin.tv. He envisions “a network of lifecasters.”

Update:
Whoa – Radar.net is already there. See it in action on ScobleShow.

Future of Twitter Part 3 – Will Twitter challenge eBay and Craigslist?

First off, if they ever go in this direction, Twitter needs to be very careful with how they go about it or else they will lose their loyal users. Maybe they could add a preference setting that allows you to filter out posts related to buying and selling items, similar to the new Filtering feature on Flickr. They might also want to offer a Mature filter to keep out the seedy stuff. I could see some very cool mobile applications built around this. Imagine going to a sold out Arcade Fire show and using Twitter on your mobile phone to find people who are trying to unload unused tickets at the last minute within 0.5 miles of the venue. I would use that.

How would Twitter make money on this? They could charge the seller a fee for showing the For Sale tweet in a prominent location. Or go the craigslist route and charge a fee for real estate listings, job postings, etc.

12/29/2008 Update:
A service called Tweebay just launched a few days ago. They allow you to post items for sale on Twitter. I haven’t had a chance to look at it closely yet but it looks like an interesting concept.

The Future of Twitter?

Last night I listened to an interview that net@nite did with Twitter founder Evan Williams from earlier this month. Towards the end of the interview he talked about ways that they might monetize the Twitter platform in the future. The example that he gave was a movie promotion where you could follow the “tweets” of a character in an upcoming movie. This got me to thinking about where Twitter is going. I’m not saying I’m agreeing with the commercialization of Twitter, but how much longer will be it be until your Twitter page looks something like this?

5/29/2007 Update:
Delta Airlines is on Twitter now.

6/4/2007 Update:
Read/Write Web spotted Amazon.com on Twitter.

7/13/2007 Update:
JetBlue (one of the companies that I used as an example in my original post) is on Twitter now.