Service is changing from a company tackling cutting-edge technology problems to one thinking about revenue streams
As Justin Timberlake playing Sean Parker didn't quite say, I'll tell you what's cool: a 100m users. That's the number that Twitter claimed last week, in a press conference given by chief executive Dick Costolo (from which British journalists were, interestingly, excluded at the last minute). Given that MySpace reached about 125m users at its peak, you can see that the company has become something to reckon with.
But what sort of company is it? Should we categorise Twitter as a technology company or a media company? This matters because it affects how we view its evolution over the next few years.
A technology company would be expected to astound us with radical innovations in the coming years, leaving us gasping at how it advances the methods of transmitting 140-character content to our brains – first via the web, then mobile and smartphones, then perhaps by SubEthaNet and telepathy.
A media company, on the other hand, would be expected to do much the same as it already does, only more so.
I think it's pretty easy to see that Twitter is a media company, just like Facebook and Yahoo and Channel 4 and the BBC. "No, wait!" you say. Channel 4 and the BBC are content-generating organisations that broadcast their content far and wide in a one-to-many way, whereas Yahoo has a mixture of professionally-generated content (lots of syndicated news stories) and user-generated content (the photography division Flickr, its groups, email), and Twitter is, well, it's people talking about their breakfast, isn't it?
Well, not really. As originally envisaged, Channel 4 was just going to be a mediator between the broadcasting antenna and content created by outsiders. A content curator, if you like.
But here's the thing: they're all conduits. Twitter doesn't build the servers or the optical fibres; in fact it doesn't build anything apart from some code to make the system run smoothly.
Contrast that with Nokia (builds mobile handsets) or Samsung (builds mobile phones, TV sets, flash memory, washing machines, almost everything else). Twitter doesn't care how you tune into it; its value lies in the content.
As Costolo pointed out in a speech at Mobile World Congress in February, Twitter's mantra is that "Our mission [is to] instantly connect people everywhere to what's most meaningful to them." For some people, he notes, knowing what someone else had for breakfast matters. If it were your granny ill in hospital, you might be happy to know she's eating.
Inevitably, Twitter is morphing from a company tackling cutting-edge technology problems (how to distribute small chunks of data among huge numbers of people around the world securely) to one thinking about where its next revenue stream is coming from. For the latter, it's going to be through advertising: to add to the sponsored tweets and sponsored hashtags, soon you'll also see adverts in your "timeline".
The idea that Twitter might have the audacity to make money from its audience has of course outraged some, because people don't think of themselves as "the audience" when they're using it. But if you're not going to pay to use Twitter then someone else will have to pay for you.
Who? Venture capitalists, for now: the company is about to close yet another round of funding – its seventh – worth $400m, which would value it at $8bn.
Whether it will ever generate profits equivalent to $8bn in today's money (as that's what "valuation" means with shares, strictly) is another question, but the company says that it is seeing "exceptionally high engagement rates" from its users and Costolo said that, based on that, "we're ready to expand this further". In other words: put more adverts in front of people. If you don't like it, well, there may be other services (Google+, anyone? Anyone?) but none with Twitter's reach or accessibility.
But being a media, rather than technology, company brings its own problems. Twitter blamed "technical issues" for dropping British journalists from its conference. Or was someone worried a journalist might ask about riots – say,"Mr Costolo, if Twitter was being used to ferment rioting in Los Angeles, would you turn it off?" The technology business looks hard – until you're in the media business.
--
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/11/twitter-users
~
Manage subscription | Powered by rssforward.com
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:15:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:19:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:19:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:19:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:19:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:19:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:20:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:21:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:21:00 AM
--
Posted By latest techno report to Technology Update at 9/11/2011 10:21:00 AM
0 comments:
Post a Comment