Follow WaterForPeople on Twitter

Yesterday I sat in on a discussion that lead to a NGO called WaterForPeople adopting Twitter as a tool for reporting progress on projects in Uganda. The whole discussion was about how the technology behind micro-messaging services like Twitter, Jaiku and Laconi.ca, could be used as communications tool in developing countries where people may not have computers, but they often have sms capable cell phones. Thus, using micro-messaging services as a low-cost way to a) log important discussions and b) broadcast important news eventually became apparent to them.

While this is the first of many projects they’re working on in the social space, it supports my personal philosophy that the utility behind social media is what makes it all so revolutionary. For Water For People this is a way to send information from across the world in a matter of seconds and will serve to keep projects on track while also serving as a way for donors to follow their money. The group of early adopters that creates and uses these things first may not realize the implications of what they’re doing, but that shouldn’t demean the technologies. Twitter, for quite a few months was mocked as a ‘toy’ for kids with way too much time on their hands to the average person. This is because they couldn’t see the utility or a purpose beyond how it was initially presented. Now, the Red Cross is using it to broadcast emergency information while others are using it to get help in emergency situations.

History is cyclical and every time there’s new technology, there’s always people who fight it. We know this, yet it still happens. We’re seeing this happen again with Skype/Vonage versus the Big Telephone Companies. We’re seeing it with MP3’s versus the music industry and again with the movie industry. These new technologies and tools have been labeled ‘disruptive’ technologies because of the fundamental way they undermine the ‘status quo‘, so to speak, by offering new, more useful ways of doing things. The only constant in life is change so, people should stop ‘getting used to it’ and start taking advantage of it.

Twitter itself is a victim of this. It failed to acknowledge the usefulness of Summize, a search engine built on it’s API. To me the usefulness of Summize (which now has it’s own API that applications like Hahlo are using) is blatant. People use the service, they want search. Twitter did eventually add search but it wasn’t exactly useful. If it was, the alternatives like Summize wouldn’t exist. Again, Twitter responded by partnering with and later acquiring Summize instead of proactively developing a similar solution or integrating Summize months ago.

To be fair, no one has a crystal ball. Most people only claim to be able to see the future, but I think it helps to recognize these patterns as they are forming. Who knows you, might even find yourself leading a trend instead of following one.

About the Author: Jonathan Gosier is a software developer, writer and social entrepreneur. He currently lives in Kampala, Uganda where he incubates and invests in East African entrepreneurs as the CEO of Appfrica Labs. He's also a 2009 TEDGlobal Fellow.

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