We all agree that Twitter is amazing, Jaiku is great in its own context-sensitive way and Ontario-based Plurk is a horizontal breath of fresh air. Yet, fragmentation of audiences on these microblogging sites is a problem - your friends might not be following you on the one that you prefer, plus interesting people are generally hard to find.

So let’s assume that ten years into the future, an open service just like Twitter becomes a standard and even gets a dedicated button on your mobile. Your friends and family are following you, more than that - industry experts and top local bloggers are automatically added to your stream (they’ve got lots to say!). This service even senses “tweets” in your immediate locale, so you can see what people think about events and venues you’re in.

What would life be like with this kind of service?

For one, it would let us have more friends (but not close friends). In a situation when key events in your life are immediately known to your social circle, keeping in touch would stop being an active task. Instead, we would simply provide feedback to events that happen to people that are important to us.

Citizen journalism would start being simply journalism. The term “news story” would refer to a fast-spreading meme, where anyone could be the reporter.

It would be extremely easy to single out people known as connectors by analyzing the patterns of information spreading - everyone would be on the grid.

Every event would have an informal backchannel, where opinions could be exchanged in real-time. This would put more pressure on performers, as even the slightest mishaps would be noticed and shared.

What else?