Thanks Sylvain!

That’s exactly what was being said about blogs too. I think that when new communication patterns emerge, it takes a while to “get” why they are important or useful.

These communication methods do provide something… we just don’t know exactly what.

Yesterday I read about “phatic communications”… got me thinking a bit :

“But there is another, anthropological, point of view. Exhaust data is, I think, a clear case of “phatic communication.” This is communication with little hard, informational content, but lots of emotional and social content. Phatic communications doesn’t get much said, but it has social effects so powerful, it gets lots done. ”

http://www.cultureby.com/trilogy/2007/07/how-social-netw.html

Anyhow, keep pounding on the issue, it sure is tought provoking. And yeah, just ot make sure this comment will be well read, I will post a link to it on twitter

Was de.icio.us a good buy? Was Flickr? Netsape? Cobalt? Dodgeball?

How many acquisitions wither away after the purchase? How many under-perform?

I’d be interested to know how many web company acquisitions have enough revenue attributed to them after the buy to justify the purchase price (and the integration price). I’d guess that darn few do.

The question for Twitter, at the end of the day, is whether it can sell. I’d be willing to bet that it can and will.

The web had developed far more over the 1991-1999 period, than it has done from 1999-2007. I hadn’t noticed before now, but that’s a nice even split, 8 years per side. The first 8 years were far more invigorating; we didn’t have the media types on our backs, nor the money-thirsty VCs. Amazon was “whoa, don’t push things too far, guys”; Google was yet another academic idea.

The second byte of the Web’s life has been far less pleasant.

Geeks develop something cool. Media types notice that it is, actually, cool. Business types pay the Media types to get them into it. Lawyers get involved. Media plays up the new tech. Bad (or no) business plan leads to upset customers. Media continues to hype the new stuff.
…. time goes on ….
we’re all used to ebay, amazon, whatever… it’s in danger of becoming old news
… media come up with “Web2.0″ to recreate the original dot-com bubble; after all, if hyping nearly-working technology worked in 1999, it should work in 2007 with prettier logos, right?

Tomorrow morning, I could decide to start a business involving leaving old banana peels outside my door. Do I know how I will make money? Nope! But I suppose I should take heart, because Google didn’t know either! Who needs a plan? Perhaps I should just retire now.

Google Mini (or something like it) we know now is a total joke compared to Google’s search / contextual ad revenue.

Twitter could easily transition to a profitable company, if they play their cards right.

I might be slightly biased , but I truly believe that inventing potentially viable business models is certainly possible for all the microblogging services. However, since the whole category is relatively new, most likely there will be a lot of experiments until the 2-3 working models are found.

Interesting discussion! It is nice to see that Twitter found cool investors.