It's clear that Twitter in particular, and the real time web of status updates in general (most popular on Facebook), is changing the direction Google is going. Google execs probably prefer to talk about Twitter instead of Facebook because they are on friendlier terms with the smaller company and Facebook is closed to outside search. Neither company has a clear corner on the real time market, though.

As I used Friendfeed more I began to realize the power of real-time and how useful it actually was. There began my epic impatience. I was growing accustomed to constant bouts of data thrown at me and getting instantaneous satisfaction. I was starting to expect real-time from every service I used, email , Feedburner, and even IM.

Maybe I am being a little over-zealous about real-time, but I want to see it everywhere. I no longer want to wait, I want to get up and go. Friendfeed has been able to do this for me, why can't everyone else? We here at Techgeist are even making strides to go real-time and we're a blog! Since using Friendfeed do you expect real-time also? I am genuinely curious.

Don't try to be the 'next'. Instead, try to be the other, the changer, the new.

If Microsoft adds a few features and they prove popular, how long precisely will it take Google to mirror or even leapfrog those features?

With $100 million, you could build (or even buy) something remarkable. Something that spread online without benefit of a lot of yelling and shouting. Something that changes the game in a fundamental way. The internet works best when you build a network, not when you buy a brand. In fact, I can't think of one successful online brand that was built with cash.

Wave, as I understand it, is a platform underneath the multiple modalities of human conversation. It doesn’t care if you’re emailing, IMing, or throwing photos at one another. The structural object is the conversation; the means of conversation is just a detail. [Note: I think.] The fact that you said “No way!” using IM when talking in realtime with a friend who’s reading the same email thread with you no longer will mean your expostulation will have to be treated as a separate app, just as when talking in the real world, we don’t count our hand gestures as something apart from the conversation just because we make them with our hands instead of with our mouths.

So far, Google is (unsurprisingly) doing the right and smart thing, opening it up to developers early on, using the open XMPP protocol, and open sourcing the Google Wave Federation Protocol. If this is to be more than just another app for talking, Google has to treat it like an open platform. The first sign of lock-in will scare away the very folks Google needs if Wave is to be more than just a shiny new set of tin cans and string for those who want to talk with other Google users.

There’s lots that could go wrong. And my understanding of Wave is so preliminary that I’m sorry to be so far out on the limb. But I’ve been waiting on this limb for a long time, frustrated that conversations are splintered by medium when they should be joined by topic and social group. Wave is the first thing I’ve seen that offers a genuine hope for getting this right by starting with the most fundamental social object we have: people talking with one another.

I think.

Steve Rubel, author of MicroPersuasion, who has been blogging on that site since early 2004, said that to him, blogging seemed "slow", when contrasted with the lightning fast communications seen from tools like FriendFeed and Twitter. He made the analogy that when you take the time to compose a blog post and you launch it over the wall, that readers have to look it over and make a choice as to whether they will respond, or if they will simply hit 'J' in their RSS reader and move along. In contrast, he said sending a note to Twitter was like introducing ants in someone's house, making them immediately take action.

While there may be commercial value for using Twitter to communicate with customers, the danger is that the Twitter community could turn against a marketer viewed as being too crass by being relentlessly self-promoting. Twitter users have set up their own rules of conduct when using the service, not unlike those with MySpace and Facebook. These rules were not put together by Twitter itself, which mandates only rules of use. Like many social-network sites, Twitter is self-governed by its members, and companies must take that into account as they join the service.

Twitter is still in the early stages of developing a plan for making money as a company, but plenty of large corporations like Starbucks (SBUX) are already using it as a marketing tool. Twitter will probably evolve into both a community of individuals and a community of companies that provide goods and services for those individuals.

Responsible Twitter users abide by four simple rules:

1. You learn something new everyday
2. Twitter is not chat
3. Don’t be a needy jerk
4. Ignore rules 1 to 3 if you are in marketing