We wrap up our interview with Twitterface founder Kristi Colvin.  (Here’s Part One of our interview about Twitterface.)

Jim Quillen:     Now tell us about your upcoming launch.

Twitterface

Kristi Colvin:     The day we launch is a free version free to all.  It will remain free but it does not have some of this integration and really some of the slick stuff that we have coming in the future.
Jim Quillen:     And when is your launch for the beta product scheduled?

Kristi Colvin:     My consistent answer is two weeks. {laughs} Now, it does not really matter when you ask me that but it seems to be the answer.  I honestly, right now the holdup is me.  I have to redesign something in the workflow.

One of the things about being a user-experience person is I am excruciatingly aware of where, you know, people can get hung up in some problems.  So I’ve got to do a very minor little shuffling and give that to the developers and then we will be ready to launch.  So I really hope, you know, within two weeks or so that we’ll get it out as public beta.

Jim Quillen:     And how do you get the message out, obviously through Twitter?

Kristi Colvin:     No.  It’s going to be a soft launch.  I mean I am glad you’re my first interview but I’m really not going to do PR or anything right now.  I have no idea how many people may use it.  I’m a little scared of that so I’m just going to put the word out and we have a slew of people, about 20 people who are going to test the alpha for us in the last couple of days before we launch as public beta.  We’re just going to do that to just get an immediate gut check on okay, there’s nothing huge that’s going on that’s happening.  And then we’ll launch as public beta and I’m just going to very gently release it on Twitter and see what happens.

Jim Quillen:     Yeah.  Well, that’s a good idea.  It seems like Twitter changes a lot over time.  I mean, it’s changing fast.  There are more users coming in.  I mean we had what, two million last fall and now there’s well, projected to be over 30 million, I guess here at the end of April and then 50 million by the end of the year and so forth.
As a developer of a software tool like Twitterface, how do you keep pace with that?

Kristi Colvin:     It’s very nerve wracking.  You know, also the way that the API—the API is limited in terms of what Twitter let’s you do.  So you don’t have really—you only have control up to a certain level.  And I’m unaccustomed to that, you know, to being sort of—to having your entire business model, your entire software development model run off of someone else’s is a bit unusual for me.  I think the best you can do is just react as quickly and as smartly as you can.

They have released something and I’ve known about it and I just have not designed it in yet but the saved searches.  I’ve had that for a while.  I was one of the initial people that I guess they beta tested it with.  And so those saved searches I do not have in Twitterface.  We will have it.  We have searching and stuff but we don’t have the saved capability.  So, you know, things like that you just have to adjust and do the best you can and fortunately people are so accustomed to using these third-party products that it’s sort of unusual.

I don’t like it that they tolerate a lot of problems but they actually do.  They tolerate API limitations and Twitter going down all the time and fail whale and, you know, it’s really there’s a lot of tolerance that the user has built up.

Jim Quillen:     Do you see that changing in the near future or in the future?  I mean, there are a lot of and it’s kind of interesting that there’s so many people piling on and—

Kristi Colvin:     I don’t know.  You know, tight knuckle people sort of in the back of my mind can see what maybe some of the issues are and but the mass mainstream, you know, if Oprah gets a whiff, farewell, what is she going to think?  You know, that’s what I don’t know.  Is your general computer user who is not a geek, who is not a developer, who’s not technical, you know, will they get frustrated and abandon is definitely a possibility.

I am hoping Twitter spends some of that money that they have on serious infrastructure and hardware and things like that to accommodate all these people.  I think they must be because now there are probably a few significant issues recently, it seems to be holding up fairly well.

Jim Quillen:     Though you still have the outages, but maybe not as many fail whales as we’ve seen before.

Kristi Colvin:     Right.

Jim Quillen:     Switching to Twitter for users, what advice would you give?  What advice would you give to a person who’s new on Twitter?

Kristi Colvin:     They need to really focus on a few basics.  They need to get some type of avatar in instead of Twitters’ default and put up a background or choose one of Twitters’ options that’s not the default.  They need to set themselves up to use it, basically.  You know, set up the bio, put a link in to somewhere if they have one and then make a few updates, even if they’re very awkward.

One of the things that I think commonly happens is that people just start following people.  Well, when you go in and you look at their profile you think, I don’t want to follow this person.  They don’t have any updates or whatever.  It’s all a bit strange.

So they need to both follow people immediately so that they sort of get something going on and make some updates and then just start, gingerly, talking to people.  You know, not obnoxiously but just start joining the conversations, sort of, gently.

Jim Quillen:     Can you make a mistake on Twitter?

Kristi Colvin:     I think that you can.  It depends on the people around you how badly the mistake will be perceived.  One of the things that greatly annoys me is I frequently get expectations in my direct message about Tweet this out and Tweet this out and Tweet that out and I want you to pull out this and that and the other thing and I sometimes, I mean, I depends on what it is, who it is, what I’m doing in the moment.  Sometimes I do send something out and a lot of times I just roll my eyes and I’m kind of annoyed.

So it’s a subtle mistake because obviously I’m not throwing a big fit about it or griping someone out whatever but it is annoying me and so I’m probably not going to be as—I’m not going to have that friendly goodwill feeling, you know, that I might with some other people.

Jim Quillen:     Right.

Kristi Colvin:     So and then, you know, those are that’s a very subtle type of mistake. You know, one of the things I also see is just crazy things where people will like retweet themselves because they’re trying to push their business or they just—they’re too overt with their agenda.

We all have an agenda and people joke and I joke myself about it.  I can pimp anything on Twitter, you know, because I’m just naturally sort of chatty and bubbly and that comes real easy.  But I do have a sensitivity about—you want it to be mutually beneficial, not just here everybody I want you to look at my stuff.  It’s got to be reciprocal and mutually beneficial.

Jim Quillen:     What kind of mental rule of thumb do you use for that?  I mean, is it 80 percent giving value to the network and 20 percent maybe promoting your own?

Kristi Colvin:     I have no rules.  You know, it would be probably shocking to see my statistics on what I do when.  Someone the other day appalled me a little bit because he said, “You are a marketing guru,” and I was like, “What?  Why do you say that?”  And he said, “Because everything you say revolves around something that has to do with you, your friends or business, something.”  You know, I was like, “Oh, well maybe you weren’t supposed to notice that.”

But, you know, I think that’s just me.  The things I’m really interested in are the things I want to share.  You know, Twitterface, I mean, people may accuse me of spamming when Twitterface comes out because I’m going to be so freaking excited that I’m not going to be able to shut up about it, I would guess.      You know, I designed this in September.  It’s been a long time coming.  I just will probably be so excited that it will border on obnoxious.  So be prepared.

But it comes from enthusiasm not so much from, you know, I want everybody to go and do this and, you know, it just comes from more of a natural enthusiasm.  And I think people can tell.  You know, when you promote your stuff or you talk about what’s going on or you talk about what’s exciting and you have a good relationship with your followers and your friends on Twitter, they can tell that.

Jim Quillen:     Yeah.

Kristi Colvin:     That’s not obnoxious. {laughs}

Jim Quillen:     Yeah.  It’s part of being natural and being yourself and as people get to know you then they kind of expect, you know, I mean, if you’re excited about something they get excited about it.

Well tell us, and we’ll wrap up here I know you’ve got plenty of things that you could be doing right now besides talking to us, but the final thoughts on Twitterface.  Launch date, website again, and anything else you want to mention.

Kristi Colvin:     The product will be at Twitterface.com.  There’s nothing there right now but a splash page but that is the place to watch.  The account on Twitter is @TweetMeUp and what a lot of people don’t know you cannot get a Twitter account that has the word Twitter in it right now.  So @TweetMeUp is our tagline and that is why that’s our official Twitter account.

Of course, they can always—anyone can follow me at @KrisColvin and they will hear about Twitterface when it launches whether they wish to or not.  {laughs}But the official product update account is @TweetMeUp and really, it will be coming very soon.  I mean May will not pass before that product’s out.  So it will be coming sometime in the next two to three weeks.

Jim Quillen:     Well, you’re down to your last two-week period.  So Twitterface.com.

Kristi Colvin:     Yes and see now you have it recorded that I said two weeks so I may have to hold that to this date.

Jim Quillen:     Yes, we have a stake in the ground now!

Kristi Colvin:     Exactly.

Jim Quillen:     Yeah, you can’t say by May and not put the year in there and then have it come out in 2010.

So @TweetMeUp is the account to follow on Twitter for Twitterface and then your account is @KrisColvin, right?

Kristi Colvin:     Yes.

Jim Quillen:     And then Twitterface.com and the blog is Twitterface.me.  Thank you so much.  We’re excited to be your first interview about Twitterface and to talk about it at our blog and we wish you all the best and we’ll stay in touch.