Has Twitter found a business?

18-02-2009

by Ralph Averbuch

Is it just this blogger or has there been a sudden rush of mainstream media chatter about instant micro-blogging and social networking tool Twitter? For some years now Twitter's been ticking along, unnoticed by most. But, perhaps less than six months ago there seems to have been a rush of print articles, both serious and flippant, about the phenomenon. This, quite probably, is aided by the recent media excitement about a variety of D-list celebs who have begun using Twitter. But this all misses one key component of what is, after all, a very simple, though very large social network. The power of Twitter lies in its instant nature and increasingly significant user base plus an API that lets 3rd parties make all this stuff useful. All these users are generating vast amounts of localised information as recently illustrated when the plane crashed in New York's Hudson River. Long before the mainstream media was reporting the incident it was being discussed in Twitter along with real-time pictures. And all of this instant activity is searchable. It's this which might help Twitter finally stumble into a serviceable revenue stream and it's plain that investors still believe it has legs. For a much longer explanation of how this could be turned into a way that Twitter can actually make cash, and perhaps even take on the likes of Google, visit John Borthwick's THINK/Musings blog entry.

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