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Twitter’s Business Model: Japanese Style

April 23rd, 2008 | 2 Comments | Posted in Web 2.0

A couple comments on the launch of a Japanese version of Twitter - complete with advertisements.

1. This is clearly the future of Twitter. Anyone who takes a look at Twitter Japan’s interface has everything they need to know on what Twitter’s non-Japanese future will be, or, at least, should be.

Twitter has reached the point from a critical mass perspective where it’s time to finally turn its strategic sights from getting big to getting business. Twitter is the king of the 140-character messaging space, which gives it the power to make the rules. Look at last weekend’s technical troubles. Instead of Twitter getting pounded, bloggers were literally crying because they couldn’t Twitter. That’s clout!

Twitter can now use its stature to implement a business model(s) with little or no fear that a lot of users are going to flee to rivals such as Pownce and Jaiku. Twitter can roll new versions of the service with advertising a la Twitter Japan, or premium versions without advertising. It can also strike deals with API users to do revenue-sharing.

2. Unless something dramatic happens, Pownce’s prospects of challenging Twitter have evaporated. If Twitter can start to generate revenue instead of just being terribly popular, the 140-character messaging game will be over with Pownce, et al left in the dust.

Truth be told, it would be a shame because Pownce has a lot going for it. But as someone mentioned to me earlier this week, users go where the users are - which is why Twitter has so much traction. Mike Arrington probably summed up in a post yesterday about Twitter’s elite status.

There are many competitors out there, and some of them are better than Twitter. But since everyone is already using Twitter, and the rate of growth is increasing, going to those competitors makes no sense.

As Twitter’s business starts to unfold, it will be interesting to see how it stickhandles the introduction of advertising into the service. No doubt, some people will be upset/disappointed but most of these people will squawk for awhile before pounding out some more 140-character messages.

Update: Privacy has reared its head in the Twitter-Sphere amid reports that someone’s direct messages appeared within the public Twitter stream. It’s just another example about how people forget that private stuff on the Web isn’t guarantee to stay private. If you really want to have a private conversation, use some old technology called a telephone.

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New Features Twitter Needs to Compete

March 18th, 2008 | 10 Comments | Posted in Web 2.0

Is Twitter getting alarmingly stale?

For all the excitement about its effectiveness as a streamlined communications tool, Twitter is showing troubling signs of falling behind in the arm’s race given what FriendFeed is doing (social aggregation and, now, search) and what much-neglected Pownce has within its arsenal.

Twitter, meanwhile, continues to struggle with infrastructure issues while providing little or no indication that its feature set will be expanded any time soon. As a Twitter fan, here’s some things I’d like to see Twitter do:

1. Improved people search, including a recommendation engine (a la Friendfeed) of who I might be interested in following.

2. Tagging

3. The ability to send files using P2P (copy the Pownce model by providing a free service for files under a certain size, and charge a premium for larger files)

4. Email notifications alerting you about activity by a particular user or about a specific topic.

5. Easier ways to send private messages. Unless you know something Twitter ID, using the drop-down menu to go through your followers is far from user-friendly.

6. The ability to have private or semi-private group conversations.

7. A business model (advertising, premium services, etc.) so Twitter can find way(s) to make money so it can hire developers to launch more features, and harden its infrastructure.

8. A native desktop application to compete/complement products such as Thwirl. Nothing like a little competition to boost the eco-system.

9. More support for third-party developers to create plugins to expand Twitter’s functionality.

10. Buy Pownce to jump-start its feature roadmap.

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