Publicity stunt? Yes. Original? Yes. The real story here was that it received lots of exposure.

Speaking of exposure, is a limited commercialization of Twitter such a bad thing for both the folks that make it (Obvious Corp) and the folks that use it (Us)? Don’t we want Biz, Ev, and all the other folks at Obvious to have a sound business venture? Otherwise, we’ll have to start complaining about Twitter going down all the time as its infrastructure struggles to scale with new and existing user adoption, not to mention all the mashups springing up tied into the Twitter API.

The Return of @Gapingvoid

Well said. You knew you couldn’t stay away

Are you Ready for a Challenge?!?

It all started with an innocent little update:

nowsourcing Wondering if I’ll hit 800 followers by end of week. 24 to go! about 19 hours ago from web

Which turned into this:
danzarrella @nowsourcing i’m at 9 to go to 800, wanna race? about 19 hours agofrom web in reply to nowsourcing

So it was on. 24 vs 9 is quite a handicap, and Dan hit 800 first. But then, @MikeonTV came in and pulled an epic maneuver:
MikeonTV @nowsourcing @danzarrella Not so fast! *plays indiana jones music* about 18 hours ago from web in reply to nowsourcing

That’s right. Mike unfollowed Dan to bring @Danzarrella down to 799

Twitter Polling

Polldaddy has created a great way to send polls through Twitter. Ev tried one out this week:

(It was a resounding yes)

Company Twittering

Back to the main point. Twitter as a system needs to make money to stay a viable company. How about brands on Twitter though?

I’ve come across lots of brands: electronics, kosher food, airlines, museums even grocery stores! There has been mixed reception to such concepts, and at the same time I think they make sense. Either for a brand to tweet under their brand name or having key employees tweet under their names can both work. Twitter can most likely get a stream of revenue by placing ads in the public stream or for paid memberships, and the question is – will users stand for it?

Techcrunch did a survey to see if people would support a premium version and/or go for the occasional paid tweet in the timeline. What would you withstand to get your daily Twitter fix?