140Char

Two quite different uses of Twitter popped up in my feeds, and both worth sharing to see the wild diversity of uses of what is effectively a simple communication tool:

First up is the TwitterLotto project (HT to Twitip), which was created by a university student as a marketing experiment which allows you to win a prize simply by following @twterlotto. And as visits to the site’s home page increase, the prize goes up (currently at $23). On December 25, 2009 a winner will be chosen, validated as a real person actively using Twitter and then awarded the cash.

And on the flip side, the impersonator of a political blogger named Donal Blaney is being served an injunction by a law firm – via Twitter! It will be served at 1930BST and will include a link to the text of the full court order. It’s being done this way because the impersonator has remained anonymous – and apparently injunctions can already be served via email in the UK, so it’s not as removed from the norm as you might have thought. (HT BBC/Mashable)

New service Twitwoop will help anyone who has an urge to tweet but can’t type at the time, as it allows you to publish to Twitter with a voice message from your phone.

Register your phone with the service, call the access number relevant to your location in the U.S, UK, Norway, Netherlands, Ireland, France or Germany, and your message gets published as long as you haven’t masked the identity of your phone – if there’s no caller ID, the message goes into the public Twitwoop timeline on Twitter.

It’s been created by German Voice Application Service Provider, Woopla, and the FAQs states that it uses the official ‘Sign in with Twitter’ process to avoid using your login and password.

All good so far.

Interestingly, the service doesn’t say how your voice becomes text, although it does state in the Terms of Service that your messages will be available to anyone on the internet with a direct link in your tweets. So hopefully not making it liable for the same debates and intrigue as voice-to-text service Spinvox has been experiencing.

Things not to like:

I can live with the service auto-posting that I’m using it, especially as I can delete it.

Not so happy about the following:

‘You furthermore accept to receive private messages from twitwoop on your private account or become informed about new twitwoop services or features using your registered phone number.

By signing up to twitwoop you automatically become a follower of twitwoop on Twitter.

You can delete the twitwoop messages from your timeline at any time because those were placed acting on your behalf. Deleting the files however can only be done by calling one of twitwoop’s numbers where you can delete your number and all of your data.’

So if I accidentally upload something I want to remove, I have to go through a phone menu to delete everything?

And in the meantime I have no choice about receiving private messages to Twitter, or worse to my phone?

Hmmmmm

If you’ve built a third-party application for Twitter, you’ll want to think carefully about what you call it, following the company trademarking the term ‘Tweet’.

The official response has been posted on the Twitter blog by Biz Stone, after Robin Wauters highlighted the issue over at Techcrunch. The official announcement is:

‘We have applied to trademark Tweet because it is clearly attached to Twitter from a brand perspective but we have no intention of “going after” the wonderful applications and services that use the word in their name when associated with Twitter. In fact, we encourage the use of the word Tweet. However, if we come across a confusing or damaging project, the recourse to act responsibly to protect both users and our brand is important.

Regarding the use of the word Twitter in projects, we are a bit more wary although there are some exceptions here as well. After all, Twitter is the name of our service and our company so the potential for confusion is much higher. When folks ask us about naming their application with “Twitter” we generally respond by suggesting more original branding for their project. This avoids potential confusion down the line.’

Which is interesting from a marketing point of view – Twitter has namechecked and praised some of the great apps currently using the word ‘Tweet’, including Tweetdeck for example, and suggests it may only use the trademark to go other apps which try to pass themselves of as official, for example.

Then again, ‘to tweet’ or ‘I’ve just tweeted’ suggests common usage of the word as a verb anyway. I’d be interested in hearing from any legal experts about what that would mean for any trademark cases.

And Mark Evans points out that Tweet.com is currently a site claiming to be about birds.

So if you can’t use ‘Twitter’, and might want to stay away from ‘Tweet’, what about Twit?

Well, that could cause problems as well – Robert Scoble reports that Leo LaPorte has trademarked ‘Twit’ for his longrunning TWiT TV netcast network (It stands for This Week in Tech if you didn’t know, rather than being Twitter related, and is something I recommend having a listen to…). There’s a related Friendfeed discussion going on…

So you might want to steer clear of Twitter, Tweet and Twit.

There are obviously reasons why Twitter wants to maintain some clarity between company products and 3rd party applications – particularly when they might be launching more of their own for premium users. At the same time, the constant referrals to ‘Tweet’ and ‘Twit’ have definitely helped publicity and common usage of the parent service, as has the availability of such services.

At the same time, the generic terms aren’t as well used – for instance, microblogging. Which is a bit of a shame, given 140char’s ranking for the term ‘microblogging blog‘!

Personally, I’d recommend building your own brand name – it’s a long term win but means you aren’t tied to one service or risking trademark problems. The short term benefit of going for the most common Twitter terms is likely to be waning as so many exist, and you’ll be able to carve out your own niche.