Twitter Inc. may have started out as a status update tool, but the underpinnings of this SMS engine may have what it takes to keep your supply chain strong.

The Twitter API, which is based on RESTful access to the Twitter database and activity streams (users, Tweets, friends, followers, favorites, and more) using XML and JSON formats, has business potential beyond letting people know what you had for lunch. A recent panel of social media companies at the Supernova conference in San Francisco this week touched on the use cases of activity streams, and it got me to thinking that sending and receiving notifications up and down your enterprise supply chain could help keep everyone immediately notified of changes.

This goes back to my earlier conversation about how CIOs will be looking for the next big unified communications system to help keep the business running smoothly.

Historically, manufacturing used phone calls, then email, to keep abreast of product changes and alerting suppliers of issues. Earlier this year, James MacLennan, the executive director of IT at Pactiv Corp., pondered the use of Twitter in manufacturing. He even went as far as noting the "value of alternative mechanisms for capturing and distributing process documentation," and the idea of using consoles like Tweetdeck as your dashboard.

Great suggestions, but that usage model depends heavily on whether the industry will adopt Twitter's way of communication, or if Twitter itself can adopt an email-like open protocol.

"There's an ongoing discussion within the company about the merits of decentralization and whether it's really possible and, if it is possible, how it would work," Twitter COO Dick Costolo said during the panel discussion.

The notion has legs now that Twitter just opened up its Geolocation API adding a layer of physical location to activity streams. This could be a boost for adoption in the supply chain management realm as person-to-person or person-to-machine Tweets could update the status of parts or changes.

And even if Twitter won't budge, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) is already working on a similar messaging protocol known as PubSubHubbub, designed to provide real-time feeds. Engineer Brett Slatkin, who is championing the effort, also called for an open standard for federated identity beyond social networks.

"If you use my data incorrectly or use it in a honeypot or sell it to the government... that's a failure of trust," he said.

Breaking trust, especially outside of social networks would be a deal breaker for adopting activity streams and other feeds, according to Blain Cook, an engineer with BT Group plc (NYSE: BT; London: BTA). Cook told me that in the same way you can spoof IP addresses and phish email accounts, false messaging could be fatal to enterprise adoption.

"Imagine sending a Tweet about a business critical subject and not being able to trust if it came from a partner or a competitor. That's crazy," he said.

But why even think about Twitter or Google's platform for your supply chain messaging when there are already several providers out there doing the same thing? One reason may be money.

EasyLink, a mid-tier company that provides business-to-business messaging services reported its latest quarterly revenue came to $20.5 million, with an operating income of approximately $2.1 million, and a net income of approximately $1.4 million. Those kinds of numbers are not lost on Twitter or Google, which have better established public profiles.

But if Twitter or Google and other companies can agree on ID federation and messaging protocols that are based on open standards, like email, businesses may well be on their way to using Twitter for much more than status updates and for something central and strategic to every enterprise even remotely dependent on distribution.

— Michael Singer, Senior Editor, Internet Evolution. His focus includes executive issues... What's top of mind for CEOs, CIOs, and CTOs?