Twitter has officially announced their third round of funding that we wrote about last month - new investors Spark Capital and Bezos Expeditions come on board. Spark partner Bijan Sabet has joined the Twitter board of directors.
In the post, Twitter cofounder Biz Stone also talks about their aspirations to become a communications utility, and not to worry about the business model too much until their infrastructure is stable.
I agree that Twitter is on track to become an indispensable service. In April I said “Twitter is becoming an Internet utility,” and meant it. Twitter is still a relatively small service, but users are averaging at least 15 twitter messages per day, meaning they are highly engaged. If they can get the platform stable, I believe they will eventually become as ubiquitous as email, instant messaging, sms and other forms of communication.
Brave new world, in 140 characters or less.
Twitter has used the “communications utility” language for quite a while, privately at least. Even if they have serious uptime problems, it is a good thing that they want to achieve utility level quality.
Speaking of which, Twitter is down
You can only say “we’ll figure out a business model later” for so long. Let’s see it, Twitter.
And no, selling your company to Google isn’t a business model, no matter how much you want it to be.
Take a vacation, talk to people who do not work in the valley, not make a living from internet software or run a (video-)blog. Talk to people who just get a job/live done using a computer or the internet as a communication tool. In other words: get a breath of fresh air of reality.
Twitter is not comparable to email or sms. It is a special way to communicate for a special kind of people. For those it is highly addictive and important. But you sound like me when i was addicted to Everquest or my neighbor when talking about WoW.
Or as a wise admin usually told in Meridian59: “Go, get a life!”
Where is the growth opportunity for twitter. Their product offering is so simple - can it really be enough to make the company profitable? I suppose if you are THE micro-blogging site, you have make revenues through advertising, partnerships, and licensing your services (maybe in a corporate service?). Twitter’s offerings just don’t seem too dynamic for me. They need to incorporate rich media into their status updates… just provide something more. Maybe they can get some innovative ideas from here… http://www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2
replace the word Twitter with “fellatio” (or cunnilingus if you swing that way). Now THAT is a communication utility that I want a piece of…
Is Bezo’s making a play for Ruby on Rails applications? He has money with 37 Signals and now Twitter.
Is he strengthening a position to complement AWS? A large scale Ruby product being the miss piece?
Possibly pushing Twitter to ream the performance out of RoR to proves its scalability?
Jeff Bezos coming on board is the big news in all of this. The man knows how to scale a business.
While I would certainly say that Twitter is becoming very popular, it has very little adoption outside of tech circles. Some giant steps will have to be taken to bring it into the mainstream.
well at least they got somebody who is probably one of the nicest guys on their board now
@ 9
The argument that states:
“Because a technology isnt popular in the mainstream, it necessitates largescale change” is one that is constantly brought up whenever Twitter is written about. Its very flawed. All disruptive innovations take time to develop, and Twitter is no different.
Already we see Twitter or similar companies (Gup Shup) becoming the sole medium for sharing of information in India and other developing countries.
Twitter is not just about updating people about what you are eating for breakfast, it is about sharing information, and providing a medium that enables communication where it was not possible before.
How does Twitter help Soccer Moms?
I polled a mailing list I am on. A mailing list that has been in existence since 1994 (and with some members of the original Well at the beginning). It has been a ’social’ mailing list of geeks in the Bay Area and beyond, like in London and Tokyo as some of the people on the list move their families and started to work else where. It’s a list with a strong tech/libertarian slant, about 60 members.
I asked if anybody used Twitter.
One - when his baby was born he used it to send updates… And now he stopped.
A real estate agent signed up with Twitter just to see what it does. Now he admits it doesn’t do anything for him.
So - how is twitter useful for real estate agents? soccer moms?
Private twittergroups is the germ of a business model.
calling yourself a utility and achieving utility-level quality is the difference between…well, it’s a whale of a difference
For the amount of exposure Twitter has gotten it should be far bigger. I’m with the others in saying that no one I know is using Twitter. Of course, no one I know uses Digg either.
I think most concerning is that I don’t know any young people using it. It seems like most successful new communication platforms are usually adopted first by teens.
Biz mentioned in Scoble’s interview that money wasn’t the issue - its the architecture thats messing them up. How’s this news? The site is great, and will be a huge necessity when it works correctly, but all the funding can’t help them until they destroy that Failwhale
ubiquitous as email, instant messaging, sms and other forms of communication - not a chance - twiiter is awesome and has lots of growth opportunities but that is a major stretch.
“I believe they will eventually become as ubiquitous as email, instant messaging, sms and other forms of communication.”
What are you smoking, and can I have some please?
seriously facebook started using “utility” and it’s effing annoying. what about a tool? a service? utility sounds like it was chosen by a bunch of “tools”
twitter is great, but I agree that it needs to hit the masses. business model is not too important until then; they can at least sell anonymised data stats (how many positive mentions of “obama” in the last 24 hours, etc - useful stats that will sell) I’m sure clever people will find a better way to monetise it.
@5 and 9
Time: Couple of generations ago
Setting: A pub in NYC and two brothers, Bob and Peter, talking over a pint.
Bob: I’m telling you Peter, this telephone thing is great!
Peter: Take a break up in upstate to get some fresh air, because people outside this big city don’t need it and won’t use it. Why would they pay that much money when telegraphs are a few pennies. No one is going to even pay to get that type of infrastructure up and going that far out.
Bob: I hate you Peter and I am sleeping with your wife.
————-
Learn from history. The problem with most tech people, and the deciding factor of if you ‘are the man’ or ‘work for the man’ is your inability to think outside the box. For example, I am creating a twitter type micro-blog solution for small businesses to crowd source information with each other and to connect with their customers like never before. - In the future it’s not just us nerds who will use this type of technology.
@Steven You’re an idiot.
Never heard of it.
Twitter is like RSS–useful to some, overwhelming to most.
It gets so much attention by the ‘technorati’ because people like Arrington and Gillmore spend every waking hour glued to their computer…
Yea, revenue models are overrated anyway.
If they didn’t keep banning the porn sites using it they might actually find a way to make money out of it. Perhaps now with an ex-porn tech on board they might wake up to that.
Love Twitter… I was reading somewhere that most great Interne biz products started off as something else and then became something else: PayPal was a Bank, RockYou was a photo editor, etc! VCs are you listening? Its all about backing great teams
anyone know how much they are spending a day?
#24 That’s correct… But many of us spend the same ammount of time infront of our PC’s
Twitter just isn’t very tractable and their team knows that. It will take time.
Hell, they thought they it was a micro-blogging service, and many people still call it that.
WTF is this obsession with super-massive wealth? Why can’t something like Twitter settle down in a nice, stable niche making modest profit just like 99.9% of all viable businesses out there? Why can’t it be like Weetabix, or Toppan ?
Twitter is OBVIOUSLY popular, and probably has a future. I just don’t understand this attitude that if it doesn’t make $10 bazillion dollars then it’s a failure.
### What will be next? ###
Hotmail (1996) – Text Message (eMail)
ICQ (1998) – Text Chat (Instant Messaging)
Blogger (1999) – Text Blog (Blogging)
Skype (2003) – Audio/Video/Text Chat (Instant Messaging)(Video Conferencing)
IMVU (2004) – Text Chat with 3D Avatars (Instant Messaging)
YouTube (2005) – Video Blog (Blogging)
Twitter (2006) – Text Microblog (Microblogging)
Ustream.tv (2007) – Video Streaming (Lifecasting)
Seesmic (2008) – Video Microblog (Microblogging)
Agreed Twitter will be as big as email, IM, VOIP, etc…..
Recently my mom started it using it! Having the ability to read the thoughts of a close family member(two states away) makes Twitter even more valuable!
If your not on it yet, you will be soon enough
@32 Tell that to the VCs that are pouring 10’s of millions into it!
@32 : I’m sure eventually Twitter and the like will settle in to that niche. It’s just that right now everything Web 2.0 makes investors and engineers alike go ga-ga with delusional thoughts of glamorous launch parties, fat bank accounts, buyout offers from Google, and early retirement.
Though I don’t use Twitter, I can understand its appeal to some. It’s not a bad idea, it just doesn’t have enough mass-market potential to put it in the same league as Microsoft, Google, Facebook, eBay, etc.. And good ideas can easily flop when their purveyors dream too big (witness: Webvan). A micro-blogging service that’s down more often than it’s up can only go so far to change the world.
Investors will realize this soon, and that’s when the bar becomes raised so we can see REAL innovation on the Web. Now call me a dreamer…
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Twitter is still in an early adopter stage and having a lot of teething tech issues every day.
It is too early for it to becomes a mass utility.
Best of luck, guys at twitter.
Neat im not 100% what they are talking but I think I understand and im def looking forward to this.
Of the 300 million Americans in this country, let alone the 6+Billion in the world, compared to the other utilities they use: electricity, water, gas, sewage, telephone, radio/TV, hell..even email…what percentage do you think use Twitter today? How about in 5 years? 10 years?
Talk to normal people at least once a day. You will find just how out of touch with reality you really are.
@22. Not quite an accurate analogy. At the time the phone was being developed there was no other alternative to communicate with someone in real time. Today we have an overabundance of methods to communicate. Twitter is an answer to a question the majority of the world is not asking.
:32 Tell that to the VCs that are pouring 10’s of millions into it!”
You mean like all those VC;s that invested in companies in 1999?
three cheers to twitter’s success… hope they become profitable, because I’m on it all the time. and hope the site downtime bugs get fixed soon.
I love Twitter — there is no other way to communicate meaningfully with such little effort. And it forces people to get to he point!
Yet I also love the fail whale, and I want to make sure it sticks around long after the app is scalable! Saves the whales!
http://www.savethefailwhales.org/