Twoughts on Twitter

I wanted to offer my thoughts on Twitter as I approach the 2,000 followers mark.  It’s a milestone but I’m not quite sure what it’s actually marking. So this post is part of me thinking out loud and I’d love your thoughts and feedback.

Suffice it to say that I’m into Twitter.  I’m not ashamed to admit that it fits my ADD infused mind perfectly.  After all, most geniuses display some form of ADD, and I display it proudly.

For me Twitter has been a tool for me to connect with people across all intellectual, social, spiritual, and political landscapes.  It’s put me in touch with people that I can learn from and discover things that I might not have in the past.  It provides pointers to information on the things that are relevant in my life right now.

So this brings me to Twitter the company and what it is.

You can ask every person what Twitter is and you’ll get a different answer every time.  This is a clear indicator, at least for me, that Twitter is a platform.  Marc Andreesen has a post on his blog (you really need to start writing again Marc) that has the best definition of what a platform is:

A “platform” is a system that can be programmed and therefore customized by outside developers — users — and in that way, adapted to countless needs and niches that the platform’s original developers could not have possibly contemplated, much less had time to accommodate.

This to me is exactly what Twitter is.   It’s a strong platform in the sense that it was built fairly simply to allow outside developers to build services for niches that are relevant to the needs of each individual user.   Some primary examples – I use TweetDeck as my primary user interface to interact with other Tweeps (people who tweet).  This allows me to filter my stream and drill down into the noise of my overall community.  I’m also a member of StockTwits which is an open, community-powered investment idea and information service also built upon Twitter. You can read more about StockTwits in my post “The Power of Community”.

Evan Williams (@ev) and Biz Stone (@biz), have done a beautiful job of leading the team at Twitter in creating a great platform.  The question many have had on their minds is when are they going to start making money?  My cop out answer is that I don’t know.  Let me share some thoughts I’ve had in trying to figure it out.  Maybe some of you could help sort them out.

Search – While a lot of people have said this is the true power of Twitter, I’m not so sure.  Do a search in Twitter on education and you’ll find EVERY tweet with the word “education” in it.  I’d then have to search through all the tweets to find what I’m actually looking for.  A complete waste of my time.  I can google “education” and find the answer that I want in a fraction of the time.

Ads – One only has to take a look at the dismal ad revenues within social networks to see that’s a non-starter.  You think the tweeps have any attention span left over for ads while they’re attending to their twitter stream? Come on.

Subscriptions – I’d rather pay a subscription fee to StockTwits or Tweetdeck who deliver actual value to me than the platform they were built on.  As for business subscriptions – Too late IMO.  Should’ve started that from Day 1 and what would Twitter offer companies that they’re not already doing on Twitter?

Licensing – That’s another one that’s near impossible to do unless it was started on Day 1.  Twitter opened up the platform and there are hundreds of services built and in the process of being built right now.  If Twitter were to impose a licensing fee I think that we would see a new & improved Twitter platform come out on the market right away. (I’m of the mind that someone out there is already building it.)

Which brings me to what I see as the only viable option for Twitter right now and what I believe that they’ve had planned all along from the beginning.  Build a platform, build critical mass, and then go look for a buyer (Google? Skype?).  Evan Williams tweeted today that “Tomorrow just became a very big day.”  I guess we’ll soon see who that day became very big for – Twitter, their investors, the community, or maybe a combination.

To all my followers and the tweeps I interact with on Twitter:  Thank you for the experience.  Good or bad, I have grown from it.

These are my thoughts and, as always, I’m really interested in your comments so please do.  If you’re on twitter, drop me a tweet @fleckman or you can tweet back any post here by clicking on the link at the bottom of every post.

UPDATE: Apparently Twitter’s big news is that Evan Williams is going on the Oprah Show.  My guess on their only viable option is looking better and better.