I was asked why I retweet my SocialChats en suite. It clutters the Twitter stream. Well, microblogging imposes a special style on text that cannot be represented properly otherwise. It is a medium of its own with a unique set of rules. Maybe I break expectations as I am not sending haikus every half an hour. Tweets are very condensed statements. Some are poetry. Some are fun. Some are hard facts and bear deeper insights. I try to ignore the rest.

Microblogging is also a special form of hypertext that comes close to (one aspect!) of Doug Engelbart’s NLS/Augment, i.e. each sentence can be referenced. In Twitter each tweet gets an URL and you can quote and retweet it easily. This is not possible with any other widely adopted hypertext system. What’s missing though, are display clients, that merge and revert the order of tweets that come in flocks. Then the reader does not have to twist her head around to read in sequence.

But hey, instead of talking about hypertext and the good old times, I wanted to post my OraTweets from today’s SocialChat on Apple’s hegemony. Read bottom up:

• And one for the road: Google & Apple Common Brand Values at slideshare \*
• Today you have social media getting more momentum every day. There you have to touch and move other people, to create an avalanche. \*
• Apple got the press with the desktop publishing revolution. Hence, most of the news was positive news for Apple. That scales. \*
• I guess you have to be “viral” by any means. Otherwise you do not get a big share of the cake. \*
• Maybe Apple takes the mobile web. I don’t know. The battle is in full swing. \*
• Apple is not web, is not search, is not enterprise computing, database, … what else? What else matters or will matter? \*
• And Apple is of course desktop publishing. At least it ruled the 80s. \*
• Let’s see. We had personal computing, personal information management, music, phone, video, TV, (it is getting weaker here)… \*
• Yes, Apple is a fashion company and a design house. \*
• But after that it is a fashion statement to own an iPad for instance. \*
• Don’t get me wrong. The technology must be working and well designed. Very well designed! \*
• Apple is a fashion company nowadays. \*
• Maybe you can target areas where Apple products are not so strong yet. \*
• Apple has so many loyal customers and fans. That’s the difficult part to get the attention and awareness of the current customer base. \*
• Technology must be working, useful and usable. But it is really a matter of brand perception. \*
• I guess the question is how to develop such a strong brand like Apple, Google, Coca Cola, Levis, Starbucks, .etc. \*
• I am on Apple since 1983; Apple //e, later the Mac. iTunes and iPod of course, but neither an iPhone nor an iPad yet. \*
• Some of my SocialChat contributions on today’s subject: Apple… \*