In the beginning of the year, after catching up to a lot of feeds I didn’t check during the holidays, I realized on how much buzz there is going around Twitter. This seemingly simple web-based service, whose purpose was to share quick messages across a community, is gaining more and more momentum with the various applications being built around it, while at the same time suffering from the lack of a business model to guarantee it’s survival in the future.
In case you haven’t noticed, I’m going to place a list of a few Twitter apps and services that have been coming up that might interest you:
Twittrans - The app allows Twitter users to quickly translate any short message to a variety of languages. The translation is uses OneHourTranslation platform and results are promised in a few minutes.
Tweeteorology – An app that displays tweets about the weather and allows users to search/limit by location.
Twittermap - A mashup that shows tweets on a Google Map where you can search Twitter usernames and coordinates entered in specific format expected by TwitterMap.
Tweetbacks – A service that functions like trackbacks but, instead of listing blogs linking to a specific post, it lists Tweets about a specific post. This one is gaining quite a buzz lately.
Twopular – A really cool Twitter trend follower based on keywords used in Tweets. Think Google Trend Labs on Twitter.
Magpie- Not my favorite, but still worth mentioning. Magpie is an ad network for Twitter. Brands and users sign up and create campaigns which consist of magpie-tweets (or ads). Twitterers allow Magpie to post magpie tweets among their tweets and for them to get paid for it.
I could go on forever, but you can check for yourself in the Twitter Apps databases growing online, like Twitdom or the Twitter Fan Wiki how these tools are growing and the kind of love Twitter generates on the users.
Twitter may have found a business model already by using two powerful ideas – buying friends online and popularity ranks gained through the sheer number of users following another user. This is an idea that mixes the aggregator factor of social networks and the natural popularity that user gain through content contributions made that are relevant for the online world.
So, to sum up this post, my bet for 2009 as a business that will continue to boom and to which the brands should be aware is Twitter – it will grow more and more through this year as more user will use it to share and search for opinions. Be prepared for this – or better yet, start thinking up ways to grow with it!
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