Around the Net
Twitter Moves Into Mainstream
- Los Angeles Times, Thursday, April 15, 2010 1:53 PM
Twitter news -- much of which has broad industry implications -- has been coming fast and furious from the company's Chirp developer conference this week.
Along with its AdSense-like
monetization model, the microblogging service revealed some eye-opening user metrics. To wit, Twitter says it has over 105 million registered users who write 55 million posts a day; it's adding
roughly 300,000 users a day; and its site now attracts some 180 million monthly visits.
"In addition to an explosion of users, Twitter is fielding 600 million search queries each day,"
reports The Los Angeles Times.
The New York Times' Bits blog describes Chirp as Twitter's "coming out
party," "as Twitter the start-up turns into Twitter the big company, with more spin, more polish and more controversy."
Regarding said controversy, the company also unveiled several new
features, some of which will compete directly with services already offered by startups that -- perhaps naively -- considered Twitter a "friend." Case in point, Twitter chief exec Evan Williams
confirmed plans to launch its own link shortener, explaining that it would be "stupid" not to add native link-shortening capabilities, according to TechCrunch. "It is not clear how the new feature will affect bit.ly, the third-party link shortener
Twitter currently uses as its default, but it sounds like that may change soon."
In an example, Twitter confirmed that it will be launching an 'official' Twitter application for Google
Android devices. "Evan Williams ... said that the company had decided to make its own Twitter clients because new users were finding it difficult to find the right software," reports The U.K. Telegraph. Sorry, independent developers.
Twitter brass also used
Chirp as an opportunity to discuss various challenges facing the company. In particular, Williams admitted that millions of potential users still "don't get" Twitter. "When we did the research we
found that we were really under-serving users," Williams said according to the L.A. Times. "We're not getting nearly as many users started and engaged." As evidence of this failure, Williams said
Wednesday that when people start to type "I don't get . . . " into a Google search, the No. 2 suggestion is "I don't get Twitter," right after "I don't get drunk I get awesome."
