Just as..
..twitter drops out of favour for the next great fad.
The latest suitor for everyone's favourite mobile application is apparently Apple. Quite why Apple wants to buy Twitter is not entirely clear, but that hasn't stopped the story spreading, partly because it's too good a story to kill and partly because it will create page impressions whether it is true or not. Apple is in …
So many people are interested in twitter, but has anyone figured out a way to make money on twitter itself? I know some people make money/marketing using it; I can think of four or five local companies as examples of using it to boost sales/marketing/promotions. However, how does twitter itself make money? When this many businesses are this interested in something that's a money sink, it's usually sports-related.
On one side you have a company that has inferior technology which does not scale well but is loved by the coloured crayon wielding c0cks that evangelise it even though it serves no useful purpose and seems to be entirely used by self obsessed self promoting new media gurus who like the sound of their own voice.
And the other company is Twitter.
Nope .. www.applefritter.com is already taken.
This has got to be a non-story ... unless Apple have an incredible plan, this would just be a nonsense buy. Apple know how to make money ... Web 2.0 does not make real money.
Apple could easily provide Twitter like functionality from its mobileme platform .. hell anyone can do it with an Apache webserver and some PHP code.
Oh course, someone should buy it (for 50p) and then shut it down.
Well, seeing as a lowercase m denotes milli, I believe this is quite a fair price... I'd buy twitter for 700 millidollars ($0.70!) too! It's worth nearly that much.
Why the hell would anyone pay $700M for a site that doesn't make any money and probably never will, though? This defies logic, I thought the dotcom bust was over long ago... or is this dotcom2.0?
a cross between RSS status updates and BCC'ed instant messaging.
The only thing stupider than someone who uses Twitter is someone who bashes Twitter without having a clue about what it's useful for.
I've only followed one person who used it in an annoying way (updates about having a nice drink or going to bed and the like). Despite them updating on more interesting things (events, links etc.) that nonesense got on my tits and I stopped following them.
There are plenty of other people who use Twitter in a more valuable way - if you're interested in them. @stephenfry is an obvious one, but others such as @amandapalmer (assuming you give a hoot about her and her shennanegans) use it in a fun and entertaining manner.
If you don't 'get' twitter, get a decent desktop client (twhirl is ok on the PC) follow a few people and leave the app running for a week. If you still don't get it, try following some more interesting people instead. Maybe @guardiantech
sure - it is also a way to subscribe to these RSS feeds and easily reference them! Because that isn't already part of the technology... ;-)
I personally prefer Twitters adorable step-sister - Plurk. But hey, I am also the sorry kind of introvert who are more interested in connecting with friends and peers than broadcasting myself to world + dog...