In case you haven’t noticed, there are now 2 Twitters.

The first Twitter operates just as its founders intended. Its a great broadcast medium for quickly distributing quick hits of information and/or links. Its a great source of real-time information that travels with you on any device.  Its the ultimate enabler of “if information is important to me, it will find me”.   On all levels, this version of Twitter is succeeding for its users.

The second Twitter is not so pleasant. This version of Twitter is the home for hate and ridicule.  It’s where everyone and anyone can quickly create an account and spew whatever venom they choose directly at the target of their derision.  Lisa Rinna recently got into it with a follower who criticized her appearance.  My timeline is filled with people with 1 or 2 followers who apparently set up an account purely to curse or condemn me and others.  It takes the fun and return out of Twitter when you look at the tweets  people send you   and its full of people hoping you are in a car accident , get knifed or just plain cursing you.

Every medium has its problems.  Every medium also has a hassle vs return equation as well.  If the hate numbers continue to increase for twitter, so will the hassle and the likelihood that those who invest time towards using Twitter as it should be used will choose to stop using it.

The anonymity of Twitter has value, but like Myspace in the early days, what worked for it in the short term, could work against it in the long term.  If Twitter doesn’t come up with a solution for the quantity of hate being published, the door will be open for others to pre – empt and replace it.

A question for you. When was the last time you surfed the net ? Can you remember when you just clicked around looking to discover new sites or a site to occupy your time ? Now ask yourself when was the last time you sat on your couch or laid in bed clicking the remote looking for something to watch on TV.  Finally, how long do you regularly spend  on Facebook ?  How much time do you spend checking out your Wall, your friends’ Wall and hopping from profile to profile checking people out ?

If you are like most, you kill more time hopping around on Facebook than you do exploring the Net.  IMHO, while good old TV remains the ultimate, passive cure for boredom at home, Facebook is now where we kill time at work, on our mobile devices or while at home with the TV  on.

Everything that the net was 5 or more years ago, Facebook is today.

The interesting thing is that Facebook knows it.  Slowly but surely they are extending their tentacles into traditional websites, mobile apps (android/iphone/Ipad) and soon your HDTV .

It started with Facebook Connect.  It extended with search from inside the Facebook Platform.  Now they are accelerating their extensions through Virtual Currency (a future goldmine as it extends to business), allowing websites to add a Like button with user pictures through a simple widget and much much more. In other words, your favorite website doesnt know it yet, but Facebook is in the process of annexing  it.

Brilliant in its simplicity. Facebook is putting out trojan horse after trojan horse and no one seems to care.  The only thing FB has not done is create a  mobile operating system ala Android/Iphone as a platform for applications.

Why would Facebook create a mobile operating system ? For the same reason Google did. For the same reason that Apple banned Flash and other meta platforms from the Iphone.  The mobile  operating system is the ultimate trojan horse for billions of devices.  If you can create a mobile operating system that phone manufacturers adopt and that becomes a  popular platform for application development, you have hope of controlling your own destiny.  If you are just an application on someone else’s operating system and perceived as a threat you can be “Flashed”.  Does Facebook have a choice but to create a mobile operating system ?

It wont be long, if it hasnt already happened that Google and Apple will see Facebook as a unique threat to their future.  Apple has some level of connection to its customer/users, Google has minimal if any connection to their users. Facebook knows more than all of us like to admit about its users. They have our personal information, our pictures, our friends, our family members, our employers and business associates all in a database and they are extending that information base to what we like on sites outside the Facebook platform.  Plus they are creating their own currency.Just as important is the fact that we are progressively spending more time on Facebook than we are sites and applications that Apple and Google can control .  That is a threat to Apple and Google.

It wasnt all that long ago that the concept of Apple excluding Flash from its mobile platform would have been laughable. Its not any longer. Both Apple and Google have to see Facebook as the greatest threat to their futures. The question is what do they do about it and how does Facebook respond ?

Unlike Google and Apple, Facebook doesnt have 10s of billions of dollars in cash to subsidize development and distribution. They can’t outlast a direct assault from Apple or Google.

Enter Microsoft. Already a shareholder.  Already with a mobile and desktop operating system /development platform. Most importantly, already with billions in cash and the capacity to pay 15 or 20 Billion dollars or more to acquire Facebook.

There is no doubt that this is NOT the direction that Facebook wants to go. They want to remain independent. But just as Apple and Google quickly turned from friend to foes, Facebook will soon be the object that both of those companies see in the rearview mirror.  I dont see either Apple or Google as being suitors to buy Facebook. That isnt their style. On the other hand, its straight out of the Microsoft playbook. If you cant beat them or outlast them, buy them.

Time will tell, but there is no question that Facebook is quickly becoming the biggest threat to the futures of Apple and Google

An article by John Doerr had a great quote from technology luminary Alan Kay that every entrepreneur needs to remember “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

I’m working with a company that at one point had a product that was not only best in class, but also technically far ahead of its competition.  It created a better way of offering its service and customers loved it and paid for it. Then it made a fatal  mistake.  It asked its customers what features they wanted to see in the product and they delivered on those features. Unfortunately for this company, its competitors didn’t ask customers what they wanted. Instead, they had a vision of ways that business could be done differently and as a result better.  Customers didn’t really see the value or need, until they saw the product.  When they tried it , they loved it.

So what did my company do when they saw what their competitor had done ? They repeated their mistake and once again asked their customers what they wanted in the product. Of course the customer responded with features that they now loved from the other product.

They didn’t improve their competitive positioning. They put themselves in a never ending revolving door of trying to respond to customer requests. To make matters worse, resources and brainpower that could be applied to “inventing the future” were instead being used to catch up with features that locked them into the past.

Entrepreneurs always need to be reminded that its not the job of their customers to know what they don’t know. In other words, your customers have a tough enough time doing their jobs. They don’t spend time trying to reinvent their industries or how their jobs are performed. Sure, every now and then you come across an exception. But you can’t bet the company on your finding that person at one of your customers.

Instead, part of every entrepreneurs job is to invent the future. I also call it “kicking your own ass”. Someone is out there looking to put you out of business. Someone is always out there who thinks they have a better idea than you have. A better solution than you have. A better or more efficient product than you have.  If there is someone out there who can “kick your ass” by doing it better, its part of your job as the owner of the company to stay ahead of them and “kick your own ass” before someone else does.

Your customers can tell you the things that are broken and how they want to be made happen. Listen to them. Make them happy. But they won’t create the future roadmap for your product or service. That’s your job.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.  Words that should always be part of your product or service planning.