The Birth of Twitter
Wherever you stand in the Twitter debate (love or hate), I have contested for some time that you at least have to find it interesting that so many people are into communicating in this new way. Anyway, I quite enjoyed this story of how Twitter came to be from @Dom. (The original nugget was super simple: “a service that uses SMS to tell small groups what you are doing”.)
As a side note, my (kinda) bold prediction for 2009 is that Facebook will buy Twitter and Microsoft will buy Facebook (or at least put the wheels in motion). While I think both can be profitable services, I don’t think either will ever be massively so (especially if they rely on business models that are about interpersonal interactions). At the end of the day, I’m not sure how either will live up to the large investments they already have (and rumor has it both are looking to add to, Twitter with $20 million). Sure, I understand Fred’s point about looking at costs when thinking about revenues, but surely all the investors in these two companies are going to want to see returns that match the scale of their investments, right? (Just my two cents.)