Twibbon: Is it just about wearing a badge?

Now doubt Twitter is becoming a phenomenon on-line. And the number of sites that survive because of Twitter are increasing. Earlier I wrote about Twitterfeed, a service that allow you to post your feeds automatically to your Twitter Page. Another one I recently came across is Twibbon. Twibbon is about wearing a badge to show off your affiliation. But is Twibbon only about wearing a badge?

The habit of wearing an E-badge is becoming very popular these days. There are sites that force you to wear a badge to show your affiliation. There a badge is nothing more than a reciprocal link. You link me because I linked you is bad on-line attitude.



Twibbon takes E-badges to a new level. People wear a badge to support a cause. IE6 Must Die was a cause that many Twitter users supported and made popular that it trended on Twitter for a long time. When the King of Pop passed away, people who mourned the sad demise wore a black badge on their profile and Jackson trended on Twitter like never before. Along with the Badge, Twibbon sends out a tweet on the person wearing the badge. It is actually a link to the location of the badge so that other people can come and claim a badge for their profile if they care. It is viral, viral and viral all the way.

I am always of the opinion that Internet is more about marketing than 'information' Of course it is a good way to gather and process information. But it is more about companies gathering information about what people are looking for when. No wonder why most of the services online, like search and social networking, come free of cost to the users.

Twibbon is another way of finding out what people are interested in, when. Twibbon lets you take a closer look at 'what people want', a degree higher than search engines, because people wear a badge usually because they are emotionally attached to something. And I am happy that they don't keep that information to themselves like most of the search engine companies do.

In short, Twibbon, like What the Trend is a great market research tool. I think it can go a long way by helping marketing wiz kids to formulate their strategies. Internet is mostly about Attention Economy now. And Twibbon is only about that.

Photo from Twibbon