Missed this post announcing further refinements to how Twitter is integrating search (I was in NYC last week), but it’s worth noting, and thinking about. Many others commented upon it, so I’ll try to not repeat what they said.
I think the focus, however, should be on this line: “The best way to experience Twitter Search is when it’s a natural part of your normal Twitter experience.”
Exactly. The integration of results right into the main content section sets Twitter up beautifully for the integration of the next phase of Twitter monetization – TweetSense. Twitter knows it has to create an ad platform that reacts to a known set of results, both on Twitter’s domain, but more importantly, off it as well. The starting point is TweetWords – which will work beautifully off these new results. TweetSense will be TweetWords exported to other instances of Twitter out in the wild – TweetDeck, ExecTweets, and the like.
This is also interesting: “Twitter Search is an engine for discovering what is happening right now but it doesn’t always have to be a box and a button.”
No it doesn’t. Search has many interfaces, and so will Twitter.
Thinking about search as a way to make money is probably not going to work. The making money part needs to come way after RTS has proven useful to people.
As far as the “work beautifully” you mentioned twice this remains to be seen. Search in a CPA/ROI game and Twitter is a highly suspect and unproven channel. It may work, but the social nature of twitter presents a huge obstacle I’ve yet to see mentioned.
I think the next stage of twitter monetization will be a rethink of our basis of micro-value exchange. Twitter could be a platform for disruption in this space. Imagine a way to discover someone nearby with a coupon you want or will to pay for your unexpired meter time – and a way to exchange $. Discussed more at;
http://www.mccollam.com/jakeblog/2009/04/twitter-economics/
There’s stuff to be filled in for sure…
It’d be great if there was a micro-exchange function built into twitter so we could easily transfer a few bucks between tweeters.
We need good way to make the context known. Short of just knowing that #flight number is the convention for airlines, how would we communicate that? I suppose the host location could put up big signs (This is #LOBLAW27 – but what’s in it for them?). What about a GPS mashup? What if we could simply open up a channel to anyone within a few hundred feet?
If you could figure these aspects out (and a way to skim a small value-add surcharge for the service) you’d have the thing licked.
Now, here’s the good part. There’s also a convention called hashtags. This simply means ‘tagging’ your post with a code prefixed with a #. So I could create a tweet like, “brrr, sure is cold on this flight – wish the attendant would turn up the heat on flight #ac905″. Anyone can subscribe to a hashtag. So if, for instance, the flight crew were monitoring #ac905 – then they’d be able to fix the heat, or make an announcement, or ignore it.
It’d be great if there was a micro-exchange function built into twitter so we could easily transfer a few bucks between tweeters.
Thank You..
Twitter’s monetization attempt will be short lived because it fails to have any technological advantage.
Remember how you had to pay for classifieds before craigslist came along? Craigslist won because internet classifieds can be run on a large scale a very tight budget, so the site that won was one that had no ads and very few charges.
Blogging is the same way. Whether blogging entire tomes or 140 characters at a time, no one’s become rich running a blog service. The technology is far too basic, simple, and cheap. None of the leading blog providers are hugely profitable.
There will soon be a battle of 140-character blogging services, and the ones pasted with advertisements will lose.