

Twitter is a Cash Cow in the Making - transburgh
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/01/twitter-is-a-cash-cow-in-the-making.html

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jwesley
So his only argument that Twitter is a protocol is that Seth Godin said that
Twitter is a protocol. I think there is some truth to it, but it is nowhere
near the level of information control that Google has achieved with Search.
It's an invalid comparison, especially since 99% of apps operating on the
Twitter protocol are completely asinine.

The mobile payment angle could be true, but its far from a sure thing. I tend
to think most payments from mobile devices will be done through mobile web
browsers, the same way we do them on a computer.

The piece closes by saying "The true power behind popular protocols can almost
never be predicted" and "as Twitter grows it will have to remain observant of
emerging trends of its users".

So you write an article predicting twitter will be a cash cow, and conclude by
claiming the method of generating cash cannot be predicted? What makes this
cash cow such a sure thing?

I strongly believe that Twitter will succeed, but this article is weak. The
only real nugget is the Amazon Affiliate angle, and changing user links is
borderline unethical and likely not a massive revenue generator.

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bjplink
The URL Control part is the key. A lot of spammers and scammers are already
doing this themselves using TinyURL as a front for affilaite re-directs.

It might be morally questionable though for Twitter to hijack the Amazon links
of the everyman who is just posting something with no intention of making a
profit from it.

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ks
_It might be morally questionable though for Twitter to hijack the Amazon
links of the everyman who is just posting something with no intention of
making a profit from it._

I don't have a problem with that if the link doesn't have any affiliate info.
But it would be morally questionable for Twitter to replace existing affiliate
info with their own.

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netcan
Why?

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albertsun
I hope they have some great linguists and NLP people around too, because
academically it's a great place to study how people use language naturally.

And not-academically, figuring out how to parse meaning from Twitter could be
huge for contextual advertising and targeting, in a very non-privacy invading
way.

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palish
"My girlfriend and I really hate this new potato peeler. Sweet, nevermind,
Twitter popped up an ad for mypotatopeelers.com before I finished."

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sanj
The comments by Mihai Secasiu are more insightful than the article itself.

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lacker
Maybe Twitter could detect whenever a product name is used in a tweet, and
turn that into a link to a list of places to buy it.

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pchristensen
That's how Balsamiq uses Twitter for advertising. He has a Twitter alert for
things like "mockup tools" and when he sees someone expressing a need his
product fills, he sends an advert prefixed with a $$.

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jonknee
If Google tried to pull something like re-writing links into affiliate links
they would be called evil.

