Partying with Twitter

Alas, no FaceTwit or TwitBook for us. Facebook, that sublime time-wasting community utility, was making overtures to “It” social media entity Twitter, but it looks like Twitter’s not interested in selling out, thank you very much, according to reports. Even for $500 million in stock — and Facebook’s valuation is spanking Internet bigwigs like eBay, let’s not forget.

Perhaps Twitter is sagely holding out considering that stock valuations in the tech sector are volatile, to say the least. Or maybe it just doesn’t frickin’ care, because making money doesn’t seem to be the big priority for the Twit. Business model? What business model? Like a party blonde on vacation in Ibiza, Twitter is all about having fun. And cute logos.

Twitter, if you don’t know, is a text-based microblog where users can create and read posts (called, adorably, “Tweets”) of up to 140 characters in length. Examples include: “I am so high on Obama right now!” and “Brown boots with tassels — *so* awesome.”

Users can receive updates via the Twitter Web site, SMS, RSS, e-mail or through widgets, and there is indeed an app for Facebook that makes communication between the two almost seamless.

Despite a distinctly Tara Reid-after-a-few-cocktails lack of depth (and spelling skills, it must be said), Twitter usage has hockey-sticked: According to O’Reilly Research, Twitter's user base grew more than 500 percent from October 2007 to October 2008. About 20 percent of those are active users, defined as those who post at least once a month, and out of those regular users, approximately 20 percent post daily. A full 8 percent post more than 100 times a month. Surely there’s some way to harness all that good energy?

Well, ads don’t make a lot of sense. They would totally kill the scene. Who wants to read an ad when there are 140 characters of ephemera to get to?

The profiles aren’t really set up to support targeted keyword advertising, and users don’t really visit Twitter profiles anyway — they just follow and create postings via various notification/posting methods. And inserting ads in notifications like text messaging would annoy people (and potentially cost them money). Besides, the ads would be longer than the posts themselves. Subscription service? I don’t think so. What else? Partnering? Can service providers be its white knight? Any ideas?

There’s the experiment of TwittAd. Twitter users can sell their profiles to advertisers, who then can place ads within the users’ profiles. The problem is the same as I mentioned: no one really visits profiles. A new idea is to allow TwittAd to send messages on behalf of the seller notifying readers that this Twitter user feed is sponsored. Same issue with annoying people, though.

And around and around we go. So how the heck does Twitter make money? I would venture to say that it doesn’t. So why didn’t it take the Facebook money — er, stock —and run? Like the trophy-wife-in-training contestants on “Rock of Love Charm School,” who needs a plan? There’s probably not too much overhead to run it, right? And more power to it. I’d much rather swill cava overlooking the Med and dance ’til dawn than worry about ROI models. ROI models? How about Armani models instead? On the dance floor. Twitter, you’re fun, people love you, and that’s priceless.