Web 2.0 Expo Ditches Twitter for Google

SAN FRANCISCO -- Web 2.0 Expo -- The new hot thing to do at tech conferences, despite the oft-scarce WiFi access, is gather questions and comments from the audience using the Web.

At the Web 2.0 Expo yesterday, ignoring the row of lonely microphones lining the keynote ballroom, Tim O'Reilly used Twitter to generate questions in advance of his interview with Steven Elop, president of the Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)'s Business Division. Tweeters with questions for Elop posted them online, adding the "hashtag" #w2e.

I've typically seen conferences use Twitter, so I was surprised this morning to read this Tweet from O'Reilly: "Live audience questions via twitter worked pretty well w @selop at #w2e yesterday, but we're trying Google Moderator today for @EllnMllr."

Immediately I wondered "Why?" and thought of all the angles I could take here on O'Reilly's newfound Twitter scorn (Tim O'Reilly Replaced by Twitter-Hating Doppelganger!), but he quickly followed up with: "Advantage of Google Moderator is voting up questions. Someone should build an app like this for twitter, or G should add to Moderator."

A valid point about the switch to Moderator: Using Twitter to generate questions doesn't really work if you're trying to do a crowdsourcing thing. For that, something like Google Moderator, where attendees can vote questions up or down, works better. (Although it didn't generate too much interest: The tool registered 314 votes on 22 questions from 36 people, with the most popular question generating a total of 11 positive votes.)

But this brings up one of the most interesting problems with Twitter: Without the effort of the community around it to make more of it, it's a pretty basic, if not nearly functionless, tool.

O'Reilly pointed out yesterday in his keynote that Twitter is a great example of the "power of less," calling it an "incredibly simple application that has led to all kinds of innovation as people rushed in to do the kinds of things Twitter themselves had not done."

In an interview over the summer, Twitter's lead API Alex Payne confirmed that the site had certainly been used in ways it wasn't intended or expected. The other day he said he's still amazed at the industry's obsession with making more of Twitter. "It's a weird industry around it. What's been really strange lately is a number of big companies that have their own products that have been working on Twitter side projects," said Payne. "That just wows me."

But it's also a wonder what we actually want Twitter to be and whether it can handle it. As Payne told us the other day, third-party applications demanding too much of its servers are largely responsible for its downtime. O'Reilly's distress that Twitter wasn't able to perform a function it was never intended to do sort of begs the question: Is it really Twitter everyone really loves? Or is it the fact that Twitter is so purposeless on its own that it can virtually be anything that makes it appealing?

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution