What is Twitter? from Thomas Power, Chairman, Ecademy

If you hunt around online you can read lots of views about what twitter might be from the great bloggers like Dave Winer, Mark Cuban, Louis Gray, Robert Scoble, Pete Cashmore, Michael Arrington, Jeremiah Owyang to name just seven. What they do know is twitter is really important, really, really important.

So here goes:

Twitter is a social network great for collecting people and sharing people.

Twitter is a social media network great for collecting knowledge and sharing knowledge.

http://twitter.com/#search?q=twitternews

OK those first two are a bit obvious so no prizes for those.

Twitter is a people distributor and the new way to spread your personal brand across the globe. Maybe. Could be. These Youtube videos might support that theory:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=what+is+twitter&aq=f

Once again simple, too obvious?

Twitter is a new search engine to supersede Google based on real time conversations between everyone on earth. Yeah that's a little better and more of a jump.

Ha ha but can twitter change the world?

http://tweetmeme.com/bar.php?id=69450076

Maybe.

Here's some interesting twitter searches about the threat to Google.

http://twitter.com/#search?q=twitter%20threat%20to%20google

And then here this week at Google's Zeitgeist

http://uk.techcrunch.com/author/mike-butcher/

And then twitter is the new Facebook set to supersede it also. Perhaps.

http://twitter.com/#search?q=twitter%20threat%20to%20facebook

Of course such speculation could be pie in the sky but why are people discussing it all the time? Because they are intrigued like me and perhaps a little obsessed like me about its significance. I think everyone in Ecademy knows I am obsessed with collecting people and knowledge and sharing with you folks as fast as I can.

Ecademy just had its best quarter of revenue, profit, members and traffic. Ecademy has implemented twitter throughout the site on practically every page. Any correlation? Maybe.

Over the next few months we are twitterizing Ecademy yes that word is twitterizing with a z not an s, American not British. Every part of the user experience is going to twitterable or tweetable. You won't be able to move without seeing the blue twitter t everywhere.

Why are we doing this?

Because we think it's really important for you our members and while we are not necessarily sure why we sense it is and on the internet you have to go with you gut. Already on Ecademy members are tweeting thousands of profiles, threads and blogs every month but none of us asked you to do this or showed you how to or put up a video explaining the benefit of doing so. You just did it. Why?

Let's speculate some more.

Imagine Twitter is on track to reach 100m users this year faster than Google and even faster than Facebook achieved the same. It took them both around 5 years.

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/twitter.com/

Let's project forward and say 200m by the end of 2010, 400m by the end of 2011 and ridiculous as it sounds 1 billion people tweeting in 2012.

Clearly this would make twitter bigger than Google and Facebook combined not in terms of revenue or profit (they have none of that yet) but in terms of audience usage. Revenue and profit tend to follow audiences Google, Linkedin, Xing and Ecademy have taught us this. MySpace and Facebook to my knowledge are yet to announce a profit but they have solid revenues.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/19/facebook-turns-down-8-billion-valuation-term-sheet-claims-2009-revenues-to-be-550-million/

Some of you may remember BusinessWeek in the year 2000 asking How will Google ever make money?

http://www.businessinsider.com/in-2000-businessweek-wondered-how-will-google-ever-make-money-2009-3

So that gets you thinking of the enormous number of ways twitter can make money apart from the obvious advertising and subscriptions there are literally 1000s of ways twitter can make money and of course right now it is fully capitalized so they can focus on getting to that billion users in 2012 and perhaps everyone in the world by 2020. Everyone!

Here's a lovely simple way for twitter to make money. 1 billion tweetshirts at $10 a time is $10bn remember. For t-shirts!

http://twitter.threadless.com/

Yes and I did say Everyone up above. There are already 3 billion cellphones on the earth there could easily be 6 billion by 2020. Easily. I have been to slums all over the world many (not all) have cellphones. Twitter is the best cellphone application I have ever used. Have you found a better one?

So let's think about twitter shareholders for a minute.

Facebook thinks twitter is worth $500m in Facebook shares.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Facebook-Failed-Takeover-of-Twitter-Nothing-Out-of-the-Ordinary&id=2304293

Apple thinks twitter is worth $700m in cash. Eric Schmidt CEO of Google sits on the Board of Apple.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/apple/5277623/Apple-in-talks-to-buy-Twitter-for-700m.html

So imagine two serious companies think your business is worth close to a billion dollars and you haven't even sent out a customer invoice yet. That must feel pretty good right?

The billion dollar cash offers from Google and Microsoft are still to come as people ask what is Twitter? Rest assured those offers are coming:

http://www.loiclemeur.com/english/2009/05/larry-page-about-twitter.html

and here:

http://tweetmeme.com/bar.php?id=69562205

And also remember the IPO market is on its way back too:

http://venturebeat.com/2009/05/21/opentable-wins-big-with-hearty-ipo/

So what is twitter, is it just another media network?

http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/04/25/whyThereWillBeManyTwitters.html

Imagine twitter is the next form of Government and we use it to cast our votes in real time on Presidents, Prime Ministers, politicians, green issues, genetic engineering, GM foods.

Imagine twitter is military reconnaissance funded by intelligence services with the sole purpose of capturing all the world's conversations so it's easier to catch the bad guys. Much cheaper than bullets, helicopters and tanks!

Imagine twitter is the Noosphere on earth that's come along just in time for the 2012 calendar change to unite the world's thoughts with those present and past http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012

All interesting speculation but still none of it answering the question about what is twitter?

Like everyone else I am guessing, that's why I wanted to know what you think as Ecademy members. Do you like my speculation? Have you got speculation of your own and if so post it here so we can all read it and share it, oh yes on twitter.

Of course this isn't anything new we've had this before with Microsoft Passport, Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect but if twitter has a billion users in 2012 anyone with a website would be mad not to have twitter sign in. Have you briefed your web guy yet or have they briefed you? If not why not?

Oh well these are some of my thoughts LIKE them or not what do you think twitter is wink

By the way if you want to know how to use Ecademy better watch these videos by William Buist.

http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=128322

Finally I think twitter is the biggest thing that's ever hit the internet and will surpass Facebook next year and Google as early as 2012 in terms of users. This time next year everyone you meet will be asking if you have a twitter strategy, a twitter game plan or an approach to using twitter. If you haven't got an answer you will have a problem. If you do have an answer you'll have a business ...remember when you didn't understand Blogging and SEO?

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