Sunday’s New York Times carried a big piece on Twitter. The angle is on Twitter’s approach to several hundred users to anoint them “particularly worthy of being followed.”
The article goes on to suggest that, “After being named to the “suggested user” list, Twitterers can gain more than 500,000 followers who get their brief updates via a cellphone or the Internet.” NYT gives several examples.
This would constitute another drawback to the Twitterverse for me — how did Twitter make this decision?
“A writer with an interest in comic books can become the expert on comic books; a political pundit with a radio show ends up having a greater audience online than on the air; and an actor like LaVar Burton, decades away from his glory days as a star of the TV drama “Roots,” has a personal audience of 635,000.
“And just as publicity agents used to inveigle syndicated columnists like Walter Winchell into giving their clients a mention, modern-day publicity hounds are already trying to game the list.
The Web entrepreneur Jason Calacanis declared that he would pay $250,000 to be on Twitter’s suggestion list for two years. He says the offer was only ‘half-real.’”
Though Twitter insists that it has no plans to accept remuneration to place people on the exalted list, certainly it will face a difficult decision in the future. After all, no one knows if Twitter makes money — advertising doesn’t seem a good fit, and tiers of membership might drive away users. How will they make money if not by selling access to its users, whether directly, or indirectly?
It seems to me that the Twitter platform originated for one purpose — peer to peer communications — and now is on the verge of being seized for more commercial purpose. It’s a business, and businesses that don’t make money aren’t around for very long. What will happen to it after it does figure out how to get paid? Will anyone want to use it once it does?
Might it become PNC Bank Twitter one day and KeyBank Twitter the next?
