So today I picked up the latest Technology Review and turned to an article entitled "Can Twitter Make Money? Twitter plans to become the leader in instance news-and make itself into a sustainable business in the process" by Davis Talbot. Wow, I thought, what a title. My next thought was WOW, what a concept--Twitter actually making money--I had never considered the possibility. Apparently, Twitter turned its first profit with their Google and Bing multi-million dollar deals.
While I find all of this very interesting, what really grabbed my attention were the first opening paragraphs where the author discusses a quake that occurred in California that had people twittering up a storm a full 10 minutes before the U.S. Geological Survey folks confirmed the quake. A full 10 minutes. I had to ask myself what a full 10 minutes could buy a person in an emergency situation. A life maybe?! I don't know about others, but that becomes a bit mind boggling for me. Could a social networking site such as Twitter save lives? I would venture to answer Yes to that question.
So, while Twitter struggles to come up with a business model that will make their social networking site a viable, sustainable business, I believe they should continue to analyze how people are using the service. Will Toyota, or Pizza Hut, or Wal-Mart pay Twitter for tweets that mention their name to find out if people are praising or cursing their business? Maybe. Only time will tell. But I believe Twitter has made an impact in the current age of technology and that the users have taken tweeting to a whole new level. Yea, many of us still just comment on "what we are doing" versus "what's happening" (the former focusing on the personal while the latter on what is news) but we are seeing more and more "news" worthy tweets everyday. I suspect Twitter is around to stay for a good while (or at least for another year or two, which is a long time in today's technology), and I will continue to tweet and to read.
While I find all of this very interesting, what really grabbed my attention were the first opening paragraphs where the author discusses a quake that occurred in California that had people twittering up a storm a full 10 minutes before the U.S. Geological Survey folks confirmed the quake. A full 10 minutes. I had to ask myself what a full 10 minutes could buy a person in an emergency situation. A life maybe?! I don't know about others, but that becomes a bit mind boggling for me. Could a social networking site such as Twitter save lives? I would venture to answer Yes to that question.
So, while Twitter struggles to come up with a business model that will make their social networking site a viable, sustainable business, I believe they should continue to analyze how people are using the service. Will Toyota, or Pizza Hut, or Wal-Mart pay Twitter for tweets that mention their name to find out if people are praising or cursing their business? Maybe. Only time will tell. But I believe Twitter has made an impact in the current age of technology and that the users have taken tweeting to a whole new level. Yea, many of us still just comment on "what we are doing" versus "what's happening" (the former focusing on the personal while the latter on what is news) but we are seeing more and more "news" worthy tweets everyday. I suspect Twitter is around to stay for a good while (or at least for another year or two, which is a long time in today's technology), and I will continue to tweet and to read.
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