Happy 4th Birthday, Twitter!

Congratulations, Twitter! To get the most out of both Skype and Twitter, try Twype. Julian Bond's Twype (Windows) pipes your latest tweet to your Skype mood message.

Four things Skype could learn from Twitter:

1. "Sign in with Twitter" makes having a Twitter identity more valuable to customers and web site owners. "Sign in with Skype" would be an easy hit.
2. Twitter Lists show how important and useful it is to organize your contacts and share them.
3. Twitter's API makes it easy to create Twitter clients, devices, and services. Twitter encourages the marketplace of ideas to experiment with user experience and add value. Server-based APIs get uptake; client-side ones like Skype's don't.
4. Following is not Friending. Twitter shows the value of supporting asymmetric relationships. You can fill your inbox with a stream of news, family, celebrity life, and colleague updates. You can share opinion and updates with the world, just to those your trust, or privately one-to-one. Although Skype is fantastic at symmetric, mutually close, relationships, it's a blunt tool for treating the many kinds of people in your world.

Three things Twitter could learn from Skype:

1. Community supported localization. More markets, every product, with the help of volunteers.
2. The Freemium business model can work. Cash fuels growth and keeps customers loyal.
3. Ladder of intimacy. Skype makes it easy to shift conversations from presence to IM to voice to video. Twitter doesn't let you dive deeper into a conversation without leaving.

Happy Birthday! And thanks for all the fun.

tags: twitter, skype, twype, #twitterday

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.