I do get it. It is a filtered version of the internet.
More than that. A real-time-filtered version of the internet. You’ll get links from people you chose to follow almost real time.
Brilliant. In fact, I keep twittering here.
Will it scale? Is it “monetizable” as it scales? That’s the 500 million dollar question… Which, I believe, Facebook never bothered to ask before making its alleged bid for Twitter.
As far as I can see it doesn’t. A real time search on the messages posted on Twitter is an unbelievably attractive proposition. Both from a user point of view as a businessman. Boatloads of money there.
Unfortunately in order to have the amount of content Twitter needs to, to be really useful/useful, it needs to add a lot more users. In order to make the content generated by those users profitable (ie searchable in real time through a sort of referrals program (this is where I think it will go)) it needs a lot more infrastructure, more than Google has now, which means money. It’s a wild goose chase for me.
One final note.
In the past week I’ve seen three friends explaining to acquaintances why Twitter was useful. Perfectly acceptable.
However the simple fact that you had to explain it makes it a not-so-attractive proposition for me. It has its niche and I’m sure it will keep growing. Not sure it will ever reach the 150 million users of Facebook , it’s just not as familiar a concept as Fb is to most people.
One more thing. Just this last concept was so long that I never could have twittered it.
Tags: Facebook, Goolge, Startup, Thoughts, Twitter, VC, Web, Wilson
