When I lived in India for two years and spent my professional life working in an infinite number of internet cafes, my silent pleasure was to change the home page of every computer to that of my football team, Brentford FC.
It probable wasn’t the most grown-up thing in the world to do, but it made me giggle every time I looked over at a newcomer to the cafe frowning at their newly opened home page. I’m unsure if it brought any extra converts to Griffin Park but Situationist until I die etc.
Now that I’ve grown up a little, so has my taste in home pages. Naturally, that home page is now Gmail, which is odd because I love Twitter more than Gmail. So why is this? The reason is because much earlier I loaded up TweetDeck before I even went to my home page.
TweetDeck is utterly marvellous. I shiver with anticipation every time I’m notified of incoming. While the lovely little box that appears to the right of my computer screen usually contains a message saying ‘Thank you so much for the follow. Let’s connect’, occasionally it’s a Retweet that makes me feel as if I’m sharing something worthwhile… and I might have made a new friend.
It’s really not the same with the Twitter website. The Twitter website interface is dull; it’s like looking at a swollen Mississippi river instead of the littoral delight of TweetDeck. Hence the acquisition of the latter by the former for an rumoured $40/50 million unruffled my social media feathers.
What would they do with my beloved TweetDeck? Would it be brought under swollen-Mississippi control and be swamped with ads and sponsored columns? Yes, it probably will be, yes it’s probably all over and yes The Man is giving it to me all over again.
But wait, perhaps Twitter isn’t a fool. Perhaps Twitter realises that it needs to jazz up its home page, perhaps Twitter will integrate TweetDeck into its home page and perhaps the next time I go to an Indian internet cafe, I’ll change all the home pages to Twitter.
But there again, after Brentford’s extraordinary 4-4 draw away to Huddersfield last weekend, I should return to my true love and forget all these social media nonsense.
Monty Munford has more than 15 years' experience in mobile, digital media, web and journalism. He is the founder of Mob76, a company that helps tech companies raise money and exit. He speaks regularly at global media events with a focus on Africa, writes a weekly column for The Telegraph, is a regular contributor to The Economist, Wired, Mashable and speaks regularly on the BBC World Service.
