If there is one single thing that the blogosphere has been united in it is the absolute bewilderment at how a single company can go for so long without any visible business model to make money. That however was the story with Twitter as it is slowly moving towards a “business services” model as their principal money maker.

We saw it first with the release of the Twitter 101 ‘how-to’ manual for businesses and now today they announced that they are working on a new feature called “Contributors” which will allow companies who have multiple people on their ‘Twitter Team’ actually be identified in any of the company related messages posted to Twitter.

Currently the syntax being used by companies is to have the name of the person writing the Twitter message appear at the end of the message like this: ^< initials >. What the Contributor tagline will ad is the writer’s actual Twitter ID as the tagline: @<name>.

Now that may not seem like a lot but in fact I think this will actually be a good addition to the Twitter ecosphere as the Twitter ID is becoming an important identifier on the web whereas the current method doesn’t impart any kind of ‘personality’.

Twitter on their blog says that this feature isn’t ready for prime time and is only being tested with a few partners but hopefully soon will be able to do a full launch.

This feature is one of several in development; some of them will be visible to regular users and some of them will not. Our goal at this time is to get basic feedback from business users and ecosystem partners. The beta will be released to a limited subset of folks for some time so that we can get an idea of how the features work from a system perspective. After we kick the tires a bit, we’ll do a full launch to all business users and ecosystem partners. Stay tuned!

Twitter takes another baby step towards a real business model is a post from: The Inquisitr

The Web is a precarious beast, a fact that we are reminded of on an almost daily basis. Even with all the pitfalls that face us we continue to build new and interesting businesses on top of what amounts to a shaky infrastructure. The problem is that these businesses that are trying to find their way in a landscape that can change almost day to day are also being used as foundations to build other businesses.

Using things like APIs and HTTP calls they attempt to build businesses held together with nothing more than what amounts to watered down cement. Which results in a building where not even the sturdiest of API rebar can hold them together should the very foundation come under attack or just disappear.

The current poster child of this API wonderland of spawned business has to be Twitter with its incredibly rich ecosphere of developers and business ideas – some good and some just down-right stupid. What they all have in common though is a total reliance on a service that has a questionable foundation.

A good example of this quicksand of a foundation could be seen in the recent DDoS attack that it along with other social media service suffered that affected not only Twitter but just about every service that has been built around Twitter as their base of a business model. This is a ripple effect that is still causing repercussion and yet more businesses plan on firming ties with Twitter even more. While developers of these parasite services may have been crying the blues over what happened during the DDoS I have no sympathy for them.

While the advent of open API can be looked upon as one the great things that has happened for the web it has also lead to a belief that viable businesses can be built on top of other businesses merely by mashing up the available APIs. This is a mistake and one I have written about before

As much as we the users might like what these API’s bring us thanks to smart developers it could prove to be a real Achilles heel for the web services that supply them.

Not only are they an Achilles heel for those API snap on businesses they are also one for the business providing those APIs. This is because of the very fragility of the web and the transparency of it that leads to attacks like the one just past that caused nothing but grief for Twitter and other social media services that were targeted as well.

This outside danger isn’t the only one that third party developers hoping for a sustainable business built on services like Twitter have to worry about either. In fact those outside attacks are really a minor thorn in their side as the biggest problem these developers face over a long period of time is from the very companies that they are building on top of.

More than once Twitter has proven that third party developers are the least of their concerns and they are more than willing to cut developers off at the knees if Twitter feels they need to. As I pointed out in April, 2009, when Twitter was cutting back parts of its services for various reasons

This action prompted an immediate reaction by Jesse Stay, the person behind the SocialToo service, where he said on Twitter (via Friendfeed)

“WTF @ ev and @ biz! You could have responded to my e-mail I sent to you first. You just killed what was feeding my family: http://inquisitr.com/1Kn”

First let me echo the sediments of Allen Stern from CenterNetworks when he says

I know it’s easy to build on top of Twitter or a quickie iPhone app, but do these “on top” services have staying power and real business potential? Before you say yes, now think about if Twitter or iPhone makes a change that alters the app’s ability to continue.

Unfortunately these types of events and behavior hasn’t slowed down the growth of companies hoping to ride the Twitter gravy train on the hope and prayer that this shaky house of cards would collapse or burnout. Much like the case of Nick Halstead who announced that his company is closing down its original web business, Favorit, and throwing his full weight behind a Favorit spin-off company called Tweetmeme.

The reason from what he told Louis Gray is this:

Second, Nick felt RSS was "dead for the mainstream market" later in 2008, and third, and likely most impactful, his follow-on project, TweetMeme took off like wildfire, riding the bullet train that is Twitter.

So rather than try to refocus a company of trying to find a unique way to deal with an established Web protocol that isn’t going anywhere, which is in fact the very root of just about every web service out there today, Nick decided to hitch up to Twitter – an unproven business with no apparent business model that could see it survive past the VC IV money drip that keeps it alive.

I sure hope this is one house of cards that doesn’t come tumbling down but with every new card that is added to it the repercussions should it collapse wouldn’t be a pretty site.

Dumb Web Idea #1: Building a business around Twitter is a post from: The Inquisitr

Much has been made about how Twitter keeps getting money handed to it hand over fist even though it has no apparent business model that will let all those VC folks make their money back – let alone make Google like profits. There’s no denying that the little service that could fail at the drop of a whale; and did many time in its early years, has become more rock solid and continues to add new users every day. Twitter is the new – and popular – means of short form communication on the web and doesn’t look like it is stopping any time soon.

All that said though the question still remains the same – how is it going to make money?

It’s not like it is suddenly going to be able to institute a payment for services plan because that would cause a revolt almost over night. Sure it could inject ads into the Twitter stream and while people might bitch for the first while they would settle down and accept them, except I don’t believe that the money generated would even come close to what the company needs to show a real profit plus make the VC people happy. As for a Facebook Beacon style of purchase notification would go over as well on Twitter as it did on Facebook so any really type of social trust advertising would be just another lead balloon.

But let’s step back for a second and ignore the idea of advertising. What is the one thing that Twitter has and continues to add to each and every second of every minute of every day?

Twitter for all its light-hearted appearance is a literal goldmine of data but a specific type of data that I think could be worth more to the company than any advertising deal anyone could offer to it. Twitter is a constant growing database of real-time opinions about everything from products to services to … well you name the area and I would bet you would find a rich treasure trove of real-time regular person opinion on that area.

This treasure trove makes Twitter the ideal real-time focus groups whose slightest change of feelings on anything can be tracked. How much do you think that kind of information is worth to companies and organizations smart enough to see this untapped resource. As Taylor Buley wrote in Forbes about Twitter’s new business development guy – Kevin Thau

Thau, 36, says that’s about to change. He says the number of text messages passing through Twitter’s platform has grown 1,000% in the last year. Add to that the fact that users are texting more substantive observations and opinions in real time, and the company has a valuable information database it can sell to businesses.

Thau says Twitter is developing a range of analytics and metrics products and services built around the information contained in "tweets," the e-mail and text messages that pass through its platform. "We can measure the tweets," he says. "We’re trying to figure out what are the appropriate metrics around engagement and how to convey those."

Twitter’s road to riches isn’t going to be paved with some archaic form of advertising platform toss-offs. No, Twitter’s fortune is going to be entirely ad free because it has figured out that it is its own golden goose – they just need to develop the right tools to give other companies the golden eggs they need.

Twitter’s business model – one big focus group is a post from: The Inquisitr