There is no denying Twitter is experiencing explosive growth. With this growth and the approach of mainstream adoption comes big changes to the way Twitter has been used to date. The streams are starting to become overwhelming, the more and more people you follow, their increase numbers of tweets has become an information glut.

Richard Dale of Sigma Partners has an interesting take on Twitter as a Universal Information Stream, a stream location for publishing any type of information.

The above approach has pros and cons but I do believe it is essentially what is and will happen to Twitter. For those of us that have been using Twitter for some time we are used to just following and communicating in our small groups, a few hundred or thousand followers is fine and if people start tweeting random crap you simply unfollow them. If Twitter reaches mainstream adoption and other technology providers start to tweet then the signal to noise ratio is going to become almost entirely noise.

This means the way in which we currently interact with Twitter will no longer work. Choosing to follow people and users may not be the best way to digest information anymore, there is simply too many users, too many streams and too much information to digest at any one time.

The best way to think of this is like TV. Whilst your TV is capable of tuning into the air waves and receiving signals for hundreds of TV stations, you can’t watch hundreds of them on your screen at once. It isn’t technically impossible to achieve, and many TVs allow at least picture-in-picture, but the reason you don’t get more than two channels is you simply can’t digest anymore information at a single time. The same is true of Twitter, there is already too much information and it will only increase over time.

As Twitter continues to grow and it’s usage profile continues to adjust, we as users and developers will have to adjust with it. New tools and new methods for separating the signal from the noise will need to be developed. To think of it like a TV again, we need a way to tune into specific channels that interest us, while ignoring all that other white noise we don’t want.

Those who innovate and develop tools that allow us to search and view subsets of the Twitter information stream that focus on specific topics and channels will lead the next generation of Twitter tools. Search and discovery tools will redefine the way we work with Twitter.

Despite the gloomy outlook for many industries and the large number of development projects being put on hold, it is encouraging to see a continued growth in the media industry, at least throughout some areas of the world.

Christopher Chia, the CEO of the Singapore Media Development Authority:

“It is said that sometimes it is actually anti-cyclical. If the economy generally goes down, the media sector actually comes up and one reason we found behind this is that it (the media) allows people to be actually entertained at a cost much lower than, say, to travel somewhere else. So it does allow a lot of consumption to actually happen.”

I agree with the above statement and think that it’s something that requires repeating and continued assertion to media clients worldwide. Now is not a time to cut back on spending, pull programs or put digital media developments on hold. In fact, now is the best time to ramp up your digital media investments.

Media companies have immense opportunites to gain market share, with an increased consumer consumption and participation in their digital media developments.

In Singapore, the Media Development Authority is spending S$250 million to create and support over 2,000 jobs in the local media industry this year. This is great news and they expect to create more than 10,000 new jobs in the industry over the coming 6 years.

I have spoken with a number of media organisations throughout the start of the year, and especially in Asia there seems to be a genuine interest in digital media investment, but convincing management and shareholders that this investment will pay dividends is still not an easy sell in some organisations.

For those managers, consultants, developers and staff involved in these discussions the most important issue moving forward is education. Educating both internal and external stakeholders as to the value of investment in digital media and the appropriateness of its timing is purely an educational hurdle, everyone has a job in the sales process and its a sales process that should have been happening for some time.

I am very interested to hear of any other countries and organisations that are looking to support and invest in digital media training and job creation throughout 2009.

Over the past 24 hours I have refreshed the layout/look of my blog and it has given me a chance to simplify my layout and a chance to test out something new, Cufon.

Cufon is a text replacement system much like sIFR but much quicker and easier to configure and without the need for flash. Instead of flash, Cufon uses canvas and VML for cross-browser support and converts fonts into VML paths for use by javascript.

It sounds ugly, but it is actually quite elegant in both design and usage. It is quick and well supported and whilst there are still known bugs I think that in comparison to sIFR it is infinitely quicker and easier to setup. It is in use on this blog now and it is definitely something I will be considering for future projects and recommendation to others.

Browsing through Slideshare the other day I stumbled across an amazing set of slides by Todd Defren of SHIFT Communications. The presentation is entitled “Marketing in a Recession” and focuses on what actions businesses should be taking to make the most of their marketing budget during this current financial crisis.

The content is compelling, well presented and I’m sure the oral presentation that went with it would have been a great listen.

Safari 4 Beta, the latest release of my favourite browser, has fixed a “bug” that has become a common practice among web professionals.

Text-shadow has been around in the CSS2 spec since 1998, but has had poor support from browser vendors. It’s rise to fame however has been as a workaround for sub-pixel rendering of fonts within Safari.

Safari uses sub-pixel rendering instead of normal anti-aliasing as a part of the Core Graphics framework, which in most cases makes text look sexy, unless you have light text on dark backgrounds.

A workaround was discovered using text-shadow in Safari, which invokes anti-aliasing. This workaround provided a text-shadow offset of 0 and forced anti-aliasing, ensuring text remained legible.

Unfortunately these days are numbered… Safari 4 Beta has removed this option and text again looks bloated and ugly. Luckily Garrett Murray has come to the rescue with a solution for this “bug fix”.

text-shadow: #000 0 -1px 1px;

Obviously substituting #000 for a background colour suitable for that your text is displayed on, alternatively you can use rgba(255,255,255,0.1) as your colour specification for the definition to work on any background colour (I haven’t tested this across all browsers).

Ryerson, Waterlook and the University of Toronto are in talks to form a new graduate school of digital media in Toronto, Canada. This is great news and certainly something that I would like to see happening in other areas throughout the world.

Digital media certainly isn’t the easiest area in which to recruit talent, and often the people involved in the recruiting process aren’t entirely aware of who is suitable for the position in any case. This is an unfortunate fact of being involved in an industry that is constantly evolving.

While it certainly isn’t possible to successfully put together a complete digital media curriculum and expect that it can provide the education outcomes required for those entering the workforce, it is encouraging to see that universities are working together to address some of the issues and find a common dialogue with employers and the industry to assist where possible.

This is a positive step forward and should hopefully begin to bridge the gap for those companies still struggling with adopting digital media channels.

A lot of people have been blogging about the recently released Safari 4 Beta. There seems to be plenty of camps on whether new features are of any benefit, if they break usability and if Apple really knows what they are doing.

Throwing all of that garbage aside, Safari 4 is a nice update. The tabs work, they actually make more sense at the top than under the address bar and it seems that the browser is overall a much faster, sleeker implementation.

My only issue at this point in time is it’s CPU usage. Some bloggers seem to be saying CPU usage on Safari 4 is lower than 3, but I am experiencing quite the opposite, with my poor MBP stuck with Safari chewing up 80%+ CPU and driving up the temperature.

If anyone has any suggestions as to what may cause such CPU usage please let me know.

I have been a member of the WSG mailing lists for some time and I have watched with amusement the discussion regarding the release of the Safari 4 Beta and whether or not it was Safari or Opera which passed the Acid 3 test first.

My response to this is simple.. who cares?

In the web industry there are only two important positions on this issue, those browsers that do pass Acid 3, and those which do not. Stop worrying about who gets there first, and focus your worry on those who still don’t pass.

While the the two most popular browsers worldwide continue to sit in the wrong camp I am not impressed.

In a press release during January this year the NAA reasserted the continued growth of online newspaper properties. Up over 60% in the past 3 years.

“Newspaper Web Sites Average More Than 67 Million Visitors Each Month in 2008; Web Audience Grows 8.6 Percent in Last Year’s Fourth Quarter”

There is a small glimmer of hope for those media companies that have yet to adopt digital media, after having print advertising budgets shrink for the 10th straight quarter, perhaps these companies will finally look to the web as an opportunity for growth. During 2008, over US$5B was stripped from newspaper advertising budgets and given the current financial instability it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the speed of this decline increase throughout 2009/10.

For those media companies who have already adopted digital media and made it an integral part of their business this serves as an affirmation that their investments and continued support of digital channels and a digital business model can/will bring them important new revenue streams.

Now is a great time for news and media companies worldwide to adopt digital media channels and look for innovative ways to increase revenue and provide value to both their readers and advertisers. For so long advertising in print media has been an unknown quantity, it worked, it got advertisements in front of readers, but lacked a transparency and measurability that has become paramount for marketers and ad buyers in the middle of a financial crisis.

I look forward to seeing how media companies manage 2009.