DISQUS

Vik Dulat · 11 months ago

I completely agree with you. 2009 is twitter's year. I am still surprised at
the number of people who have no clue what twitter is.

PSD To Wordpress · 2 months ago

It is happening just the way you predicted, I am happy to see that you were spot on with your predictions!

Lisa Creech Bledsoe · 11 months ago

TweetBacks! I totally want TweetBacks. Great ideas all around; thanks for a great post!

walruus · 11 months ago

I really like the TwitterRoll idea. Thinking of implementing it on my blog as I write..
Tweet-this is down at the moment. To many people trying to load it.

I am fairly new to twitter, but I love it. Click on my website to follow me:)

Shaun Dakin · 11 months ago

Where is the "Tweet this" link on this post?

:)

Shaun Dakin
@EndTheRobocalls
@IsCool
@FakeObama44

SocialGO Templates · 11 months ago

I predict a huge spike in users, massive influx of spammers, tons of hackers and then when everyone realizes they spent hundreds of hours wasted they will stop using it. I also predict many biz will block twitter.

Heidi Cool · 11 months ago

I agree that we'll see Twitter making greater inroads into the mainstream this
year. I've finally added a "Follow me on
Twitter" link to my blog, but I've been
hesitant to bring in a widget or feed of my Tweets. My blog has a Web Development
Marketing focus while my Tweets cover that as well as bacon, photography and
other nonsense. So I'm not sure my Tweetstream would add value. If I Tweeted more
with hashtags and pulled in a feed of just my Tweets related to my blog topic,
that might be of value. I'll have to ponder how that might work. I like the idea
of spreading our connections between different services and platforms, so long as
I can do it in a way that maintains relevancy.

Mark · 11 months ago

Rachel, These are some great predictions. I see every one of these things coming true in 2009. I'm starting to integrate twitter more and more because I see how well it fits into my blog.

Robyn McMaster · 11 months ago

Thanks for a very comprehensive post on the kinds of links we can expect between Twitter and blogs

I could not have begun to imagine all the possibilities. Thanks for a great post.

Rob · 11 months ago

Nice write up. Very thoughtful. I hadn't considered a lot of these, but I can easily see them happening.

David Sim · 11 months ago

This convergence can't come soon enough - blogs will become more of a combination of short and long form commentary. Integrated comments would be a godsend!

It might be worth thinking beyond Twitter, though. After all, a significant number of my blog posts get shared on Facebook. Many people find and discuss my content on Facebook. Twitter won't replace this, so we need a holistic solution.

Another vote for Tweetbacks, though!

Wardell · 11 months ago

I like tweeter a lot and 2008 turned out great for the service but I think
the influence will be a matter of personal preference, I don't think that
many blogger will go all out and make their blogs twitter centric even though
many blog owners are drawn to the site.
For instance I personaly dont see the point in changing the website field to
website / twitter page when users can already enter their twitter page, myspace
profile, face book profile, or any other URL they feel inclined to enter.
With all of the other popular social services and ways to share information I
can't imagine twitter or any other service claiming king of the hill with
blog integration in the near future.

Shawn Rogers · 11 months ago

Excellent post I agree with all the items you have listed. 2009 is going to be
an interesting year for Twitter. The merging of blog and this new format are
coming fast. Your remarks are spot on.

Mark · 11 months ago

good post, I esp. like the idea of TwitterRolls...mashable, when r you going to implement Facebook Connect?

puramu · 11 months ago

Twitter started widespread use of relative dates (like: two seconds ago or last week instead of January 4, 2009 at 9:04 a.m.) and I think that will soon be a default, for WordPress and others.

David · 11 months ago

Awesome post! I see a lot of this being implemented

Michael G Cohen · 11 months ago

Great post - I have already combined #'s 9 & 10 (Twitter Roll & Blog Design) in a footer on my site with Tweeps I follow...I may change the sizing from 16x16 to 32x32 but I think its a pretty unique look. Would love if people checked it out - http:/www.michaelgcohen.com

Kyle · 11 months ago

It sounds like some of these are like some sort of digg convergence. For example, number of times twittered is like number of times dugg.

Mark · 11 months ago

@michael - that's a nice twitter footer role. Great idea

Andrew Dawson · 11 months ago

Checkout twitblogs.com I have been using it recently and some of the features
you mention here are already available.

Hutch Carpenter · 11 months ago

These are some great ideas about how Twitter will integrate into the blogging experience. One thing I hope we don't see though: Tweets mixed with regular blog posts. I have to admit I'd likely unsubscribe from a blog that crowded my RSS Reader with tweets.

Paulo Simões · 11 months ago

I must agree with your post...

We must start mixing all the tools, in my case check how I manage Twitter.
My blog and my Twitter are all mixed up... I think...

Xavier Damman · 11 months ago

Great post. Indeed Twitter is gonna be hot in 2009 and it's gonna solve the problem of centralizing all comments in one place, centered around the author of the comment and not the author of the post anymore).

There is already a widget you can put on your blog which displays to most talked topics on Twitter in general or within a defined scope (for example, what people say about the iPhone at the moment on Twitter?)
Check it out on http://tweetag.com/widgets/

Den · 11 months ago

Totally agree. We have moved twitter to the sidebar on every page of our site and are promoting it as an educational tool,
Still find a fair number of teacher who don't really know what it is http://www.digmo.co.uk/edu/twitter-in-education/
that said 2009 is going to be a massive year for the tweet.

Lesley Dewar · 11 months ago

Great post, Rachael but I still haven't worked out how to properly integrate
Twitter into my wordpress blogs.

I changed my password AS SOON AS A Twitter app was reported sold. Now, we have
Twitter phishing. It was inevitable!

I would love to put Twitter into my new blog http://is.gd/ewJi

Joseph Hollak · 11 months ago

I think you have some interesting forward thinking here.

The fact that we are in the beginning stages of incorporating blogging and
micro-blogging makes all of your predictions possible because the future of this trend is wide open.

What you failed to mention (and I haven't seen it in your comments yet either) in your article is we are trying to force twitter and blogging platforms like WordPress together.

It's possible that the smart folks at SixApart (Moveable Type) might have your
entire article already figured out with their 2008 purchase of pownce and the newly announced social application "Motion."

These two moves could prove to be ingenious. It might seamlessly integrate everything you mentioned above.

I am a twitter user (jhollak) and a WordPress user so I haven't used either Movable Type or the new Motion, but it will be interesting to watch as it develops in 2009. The fact that you have a blogging engine and a micro-blogging engine under the same roof carries a lot of potential. Imagine if twitter and WordPress came out of the same think-tank.

Fun stuff ahead for 2009.

Greg · 11 months ago

My prediction? Twitter will become a total MLM whore and the world will ignore it...
Such a shame too, as I love Twitter... but I'm within 5 tweets from some sleazy MLM
douchebag from dumping my Twitter account!

Andrea Hill (afhill) · 11 months ago

Actually re: tweetbacks, there is a service called "ChatCatcher" available that you can use. It catches references to your blog in th epublic timeline and posts them as comments to your blof.

I've added it to my blog - you can see it in action here: http://www.afhill.com/blog/social-media/twitter...

There are a few limitations:
1) the limit on the # of characters prevents very insightful comments
2) many of the comments I receive don't explicitly reference the URL. I'm working on a solution with creating a twitter account to retweet a message to which I add the URL, but it's got a few bugs yet (again, the character count limit is the biggest problem).

Silver Firefly · 8 months ago

I'd like to know if you can separate these from your regular comments, like you can with trackbacks?

Travelwriter · 11 months ago

Using Twitter has changed my writing on the blog a lot. I tend now to write short notes at the blog as well.

Steve Young · 11 months ago

I agree, Twitter has, is, and will change the way people blog - or at least ad another dimension to it. Making sure Twitter was a big part of my new blog setup was very important. It helps add a sense of "real personness" when people are on your site seeing the two-way communication with others.

Great post - it'll be a fun thing to watch this year.

mike kirkeberg · 11 months ago

I am still trying to grasp how to use twitter both to connect and to guide
people to my blog. I am also working on ways to interact on twitter without
twittering away too much time in a day!

Ming · 11 months ago

Thanks for an article that will influence the blogesphere!

I have already moved my blog to the sidebar and put twitter in the middle of my blog =)

Stephen M. James · 11 months ago

Pulling in my feed from Twitter (@smjdesign) via TwitterTools has worked well my personal website. I doubt that I will be adding it to my professional websites anytime soon. Make sure though if you bring them into your blog and subsequent RSS feed that your entire homepage isn't full of tweets. I call them asides on my blog similiar to Matt Mullenweg's (of WordPress fame) idea about asides.

Marshall | bondChristian · 11 months ago

Wonderful post with interesting ideas. I set up a twitter feed directly on my home page on my blog. I like it a lot more than in the side bar. It's almost like my homepage is a twitter page now (or at least that's how I feel about it).

I'm going to add TweetThis shortly and ditch the ShareThis stuff. I've noticed the same thing about the way we're sharing posts now. I just didn't have the motivation to go all out and drop ShareThis. This post has put me over. I'm going to change it. The year of change is here. :>)

Oh, and I'm lovin' the twitip ID plugin. Gotta go get to work. Great post though.

Marshall Jones, Jr.
(@marshalljonesjr

Sam Jones · 11 months ago

Great post for sure. Tweetbacks will be wonderful. Twitter is going to absolutely dominate in 2009

The Happy Rock · 11 months ago

Tweetbacks would be a great improvement and I think you nailed it with most of your predictions.

Ming · 11 months ago

One of the down sides of this mainstreaming of twitter might be that the conversation will evolve
from personal tidbits to measured business speak.

if that happens twitter could change it's name to "board meeting"

Kyle Maxwell · 11 months ago

Nice set of ideas here. I mostly look at my tweets as potential fodder for blog posts or for further conversation, and I'd like to think that some of these ideas can move us a little further down that road.

Wendy Merritt · 11 months ago

Thanks for the heads up! I hadn't heard of 2 of the WordPress plugins you listed. I will also be setting up a Twitter Roll in about 2 minutes. Great article.

blessings,
Wendy

Twitter: WendyMerritt

Heather · 11 months ago

On my little laptop, I often can't completely see what people have in their background, it gets cut off.

But I suppose in a purposefully designed blog they would take that into account.

Thanks for the Wordpress plugin tips.

Michael Durwin · 11 months ago

I've been using Twitter for 2 years. I've been using it to update my Facebook acct (since I never go there) and I've used it as a promo tactic for some clients. I've recently moved off Worspress' servers to my own and have been frantically trying to integrate Twitter better. Right now it has a pretty high spot but still a sidebar. That needs to change!

Phil Johncock · 11 months ago

I'm relatively new at combining Twitter and my blogs. I appreciate the content of this post. It's very timely for me.

Pat Kitano · 11 months ago

The "blog" will evolve in several directions: 1) classic blog posting 2) Facebook/Friendfeed style aggregation filtered by the blog owner, 3) Breaking news focused with real time updates via Twitter/Friendfeed. All three templates serve the author different purposes. The classic blog demonstrates in-depth expertise and expression, Facebook style aggregation shares data and news, Breaking news using Twitter, Feedfuze, and media RSS feeds, is a broadcast medium suited to positioning the blog as a "must watch" source of news. All three templates can reside within the same flexible blog platform... it remains to be seen.

Ness · 11 months ago

Yes, I completely agree...Twitter will boom in 2009!

twitter.com/kmtaha

Timothy · 11 months ago

I really don't understand this whole twitter craze. It's like the Twitter hype has gone ballistic right at the new year. Don't like it. Won't like it. And it won't change the blogging world all too much. People still, and will, want content. Solid, sometimes lengthy content.

Daniel M. Clark · 11 months ago

#10 - seriously? You really think that people will start to emulate the terrible, limited site design that Twitter forces on us? I think not. Twitter is a very useful tool, but that's going overboard. Useful tool, poor web design.

Laura "Pistachio" Fitton · 11 months ago

This is a GREAT analysis. Some of the stats and tracking you suggest, while not yet available, could be built onto the tracking & stats already available in tools like bit.ly or budurl, and i hope that they do so.

I'd also like to see some powerful authoring tools that make it fast and easy to select tweets for inclusion in posts - both your own tweets and others. Right now the (manual copy and paste) process is slow, awkward and produces unattractively formatted results.

KRAPPS · 11 months ago

Great information and ideas! Will certainly look to implement a few as Twitter is a significant referral source to the KRAPPS web site.

Smart Boy · 11 months ago

I agree. Twitter is definately influencing the web world as we know it, and helping to bring blogging to each and every internet user.

Andy Piper · 11 months ago

Twitterific post. I get a lot of value from twitter posts by people I follow, though I though, I don't really use Twitter for searching things. I imagine this will change too. Twitter already is very much a marketing tool.

Abhijit · 11 months ago

wonderful information, have learned a lot from this post...thank u for posting

Sourav · 11 months ago

This is so exciting to see that we have such product coming up and making some
huge impact. I still remember people buzzing about Digg and now we have shifted
to twitter....

Like this we also want some healthy competition to google..I wish yahoo could come
up to take up the fight..but I see microsoft gearing up....

PChere · 11 months ago

Very true. Blog designs are changing to accomdate the power of Twitter.
Our RSS subscribe image is smaller than the "Follow on Twitter" image.

Hidama · 11 months ago

I love the idea of a Twitter roll - I only wonder how I can pick just a select few out of so many that I follow.

Sharnese LaNier · 11 months ago

I see alot of the gadgets implemented. I think you should get the credit! Great post. I want Tweetback, that would be...so cool!

san pock · 11 months ago

Wow.Very informative . I really enjoyed Your post.

Rob Jensen · 11 months ago

I don't specifically list out my favorite twitterers but I do have a microblog roll along with a podroll and blogroll. Lots of great stuff out there to share and link up.

See: robjensen.info/blog

Joseph R. Mays · 11 months ago

Great post Rachel.

I agree with you about the usefulness and future popularity of Twitter. I have installed Twitter on my blog as of today to automatically be notified when a new post is generated. All of my followers will see my new post when they go to their Twitter account. Our local television station uses Twitter and encourages viewers to follow them. It is a pretty cool program.

Thanks for the information.

Joseph R. Mays

PS. You showed up on my blogroll today under blog.snap.com. Keep up the good work.

George Maicovschi · 11 months ago

Now you can really make your blog look like your Twitter account using the WPTwitter wordpress theme that dynamically imports your css styles and background image from your Twitter account based on your username.

You can find it here: http://www.george-maicovschi.com/2009/01/11/wpt...

Ross McCulloch · 10 months ago

I recently installed Tweetsuite on my blog and it's changed the way I communicate with my readers. My posts are much more engaging these days, it's two way traffic for a change!

Tweetbacks have proven particularly useful as I field questions from @jkrums on his famous Flight 1549 photograph. You can ask him a question here: http://www.tinyurl.com/askjanis

Are Morch · 10 months ago

Thanks for an awesome article. You helped a newbie like me one step closer to finding my blog niche.

Combining info from Twitter together with my blog sounds like a good idea to me. I uses blogger.com. So will look for some themes that fits this purpose.

Cheers...

rich whitaker · 10 months ago

2009 is going to be a very interesting year for twitter...

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MIcarGI · 9 months ago

it's obvious that twitter is popular, but i don't see it lasting much longer than 2010 due to a flawed business approach that does not allow the company to make money beyond a certain point and yet provides totally free networking.

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Amanda · 8 months ago

Thanks!

Silver Firefly · 8 months ago

I think this year will be an exciting year for web designers and bloggers. Twitter is awesome, and I would love to see stuff like TweetStats and Tweetbacks appearing on blogs.

renci · 8 months ago

nice design

fatgirl88 · 7 months ago

twitter FTW

Joshua Dorkin @ BiggerPockets · 7 months ago

I'm definitely in agreement with you on your post here and found a few resources from it that I as looking for. That said, another trend we might see is the reduction of comments on blogs in lieu of twitter discussions about those articles. I see it on some blogs that I follow . . . comments are down, while twits about those posts are up. If there really is a correlation, it could be a nasty trend for bloggers.

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Scott · 7 months ago

This entry was posted almost exactly 4 months ago. I'd say that Rachel hit the nail on the head. Twitter has changed a lot on the internet, including blogs. Many blogs I read now have Twitter feeds, or Twitter banners on them. They include everything they can Twitter related. Amazing.

Nice job Rachel! Good work

-Scott
www.entrepreneurtoolkit.net

Matt Dunbar · 7 months ago

I would really enjoy tweet backs. I don't know how reverse engineering tiny urls would work, but I know that it is possible to do tweet backs, it would just require a lot of server work (were talking $100,000+ infrastructure).

I'm curious to see if any company will come up with technology how it is now, or if twitter itself will release this feature.

Charelgrimes · 7 months ago

Nice blog, very intersting perdictions!

Check out my thoughts on different twitter apps, websites and
programs..

http://charelgrimes.blogspot.com/2009/05/may-7-...

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Web Design And Development · 6 months ago

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Keller Hawthorne · 6 months ago

Twitter is by far my favorite social network! It's just so easy. No profile/pics/moods to deal with. Just quick and easy tweets! I've never been so consistent with updating my social networks as I have been with Twitter.

Courtney James · 5 months ago

Insightful!

We can already see these changes happening right now.

The web is evolving like a living creature these days.

Courtney James
The Obvious Writer

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Maryse · 3 months ago

twitter is growing fast, even in France.
the country i come from.
I ve just opened my twitter page.

edsion007 · 3 months ago

That top screenshot looks like I'm going to need to invest in a 30" Apple Cinema HD display just to take it all in. Wow. Looking forward to this. Nice post.

Blog designers · 2 months ago

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