Twitter believes the best of them is yet to come

I mentioned about their search service in an earlier blog post, and how they plan to make money off it, but I didn't realize how special this search service can potentially be. People and companies can use the Twitter search service to find out about the buzz on a particular issue live, which is interesting, but not quite earth shattering. What's earth shattering is their future plan, which is to allow searches to go out to other Twitter users as a query. To rephrase this, Twitter users can soon get feedbacks and answers to their tweets from millions of other Twitter users...LIVE.

Unlike Google, the biggest search engine in the world, where search results will only show pre made documents, Twitter can get live customized responses from other Twitter users LIVE. For example, when you Tweet "what's good on TV at 8pm tonight?", there will be literally thousands of people tweeting back replies like "Simpsons", "the last episode of American Idol", or "the news". Another example can be a police Tweeting "if you see a Asian man in his 30s wearing a white t-shirt, please let us know", he/she can get hundreds of responses from people who see this man in a matter of seconds.

The scary thing about this idea is we won't know how far this can go. This can go way too far where there is no privacy for anyone at anytime. Imagine if you're lying to your wife about working overtime, but you're actually at a bar chucking pints of beer down with your buddies. In the past, you'll just have to tell your buddies to keep their mouth shut, but now, you'll have to get everyone in the bar and on the streets to keep their cell phones in their pockets, because you know what? They can be replying to your wife's Tweet, "let me know if you see someone wearing a Mickey tie", as you're chucking down that Corona. This is just one of a billion other examples. Imagine what can happen when you lie in the future!

We should be really concerned about how Twitter structures this service as it can not only change corporations' branding procedures quickly, it can also change our lives dramatically!

Source: http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=135016

Twitter Doesn't have a Revenue Model

Yes, what the title says. Actually, Twitter has made it public that they are in no rush to come up with a revenue model.

I know their funder want Twitter to focus on growth instead of revenue, but shouldn't they at least hire a team to focus on potential revenue models. What if Twitter dies down? What if another version of Twitter emerges? You just never know what will happen, esepcially when the economy is so volatile.

Twitter! Here is my suggestion. Just do your research on the two possible revenue models you've been talking about (and hire a few more employees in the process since you only have 60 employees working on a product with 6 million users), and start collecting the cash before anything goes bad!

For those of you who are too lazy to click on the link below to read about the two potential revenue models:

1. Charge corporations or even regular users a fee to use the service.
2. Charge companies a fee to utilize the Twitter search service, which allows them to find out what Twitter users are saying about their products.

At least Twitter understands selling advertising space is not a strong revenue model anymore!

Source: http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=134954