Last week the NY Times reported that Twitter has raised about $100 million of new funding, making the company’s value to be $1 billion. Just to put things in perspective, they also provide an example:

For context, that is almost double the market capitalization of Domino’s Pizza, which has 10,500 employees and had $1.4 billion in sales last year. Twitter has some 60 employees, and although it is experimenting with running advertisements on its Web site, Biz Stone, a Twitter founder, said this week at an industry conference that the company had no plans to begin widely running ads until 2010.

Twitter previously raised $55 million and has said it still has $25 million of that in the bank. So the question is, what will it do with these $100 million? Or, as I see it, who will it acquire now?

As part of it efforts to find a business model, Twitter will most likely acquire companies that’ll help it form that model.I’m thinking\betting on two major trends for such a business model:

Manage Companies Presence on Twitter

Twitter’s most obvious business model is by helping companies manage their presence on Twitter and monitor how their brands are being discussed.

This makes companies who provide all sort of analytics information, CRM integration and even url-shorteners as potential acquisitions for a future Twitter business package…

Local Markets, Local Social Network

The minute I read about Twitter’s $100 million round I thought of companies like Foursquare. I wasn’t really surprised when I read today’s Techmeme and noticed Twitter’s co-founder Jack Dorsey invested in Foursquare.
Also, the twitter team has been working very hard lately to make Twitter location aware, allowing users to share their location via their tweets and browse stuff that is happening around them.

Twitter is great in forming local communities (just checkout the local tweetups everywhere), gather news and provide all sort of local information. Fouresquare as well as other location based social networks doing can really help twitter tap into the long-tail local businesses market and take on companies such as Yelp.

So, what do you think Twitter’s latest valuation? What will it do with its newly raised $100mil?

Tags: Twitter

In a response to Microsoft watcher Todd Bishop’s post saying  Microsoft should buy Twitter, Mary Jo-Foley wrote Microsoft Shouldn’t Buy Twitter saying:

…But I’d argue Microsoft could simply do a Twitter clone — the same way that it has built its own Facebook-notification-like news stream into Windows Live — and reap similar results. In fact, the Softies are hinting they’ve already been experimenting with adding Twitter-like functionality to its business software (possibly via SharePoint). I’d bet the Xbox and maybe the Pink/Danger mobile teams have been looking at doing their own Twitter-like services too.

Seriously?! Microsoft could simply clone Twitter?!

Sure, Microsoft certainly has some brilliant tech folks that can surely implement or clone anything. It also has the resources to do that.
And yet, its mostly following the pack with its online offering pretty stagnant. Last time it tried anything like that was Live Home with its Facebook\FriendFeed like functionality and that’s pretty much dead…
It can certainly clone Twitter, probably even do a better job at it than the original, but will anyone bother using it?

Twitter has a fast growing, huge and vibrant community. Its also a well known brand name that’s getting a huge amount of media attention right now.
It survived its own fail whales, upgrade owls and all sorts of other nasty service downtimes simply because no one else can beat that…
You can clone technology but you can’t clone a community and brand strength…

Tags: Microsoft, MSFT, Twitter

(via Dor)

Tags: Humor, Twitter

Twitter is down again. Just ask http://www.istwitterdown.com/ …

It’s funny that we’re starting to take this for granted…

Tags: Twitter

From the guys at Common Craft:

Via Craig’s…

Tags: Twitter

I’ve been using Twitter quite extensively lately and I received some feedback (from my Facebook friend. my Twitter is automatically syndicated to my Facebook status) asking what’s Twitter\Twittering.

Twitter is a great way to communicate simple messages to a group of people who “follow you”. Initially, the service aimed to to answer the question “What are you doing now?” with a  short status message limited to 140 characters.
However, as its adoption became wider users found out it can be used for various other purposes – making new friends, learning of new events, getting updates as events take place…

So, if you want to make the best of this medium you should consider following these few simple rules:

• Follow Your Followers – That’s like making friends in any other social site. Twitter is not just about sending updates to your audience. You can also get feedback and engage in a conversation (of some sort). You need to follow your followers to be able to get their responses…
• Speak Up (Engage in a Conversation) - Participation is the key to letting people know you’re there, what you’re about.
• Ask (Initiate Conversation) – Ask questions. Listen to responses. Learn!
  From “Are comments working properly on my site?” to “Is this marketing approach appealing?”…  you’re followers probably have valuable input they can provide if you let them.

Got some other TwitterEthics to add?

Tags: Social Web, Twitter