• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, October 7, 2016

Every day I wake up and get an email from Twitter; seems that I’m not tweeting much. (I figure Donald Trump is doing enough for both of us.)

The social media service wants to know what’s on my mind at the moment, about anything -- TV, fitness, toenail clippings, wild weather events, or perhaps food.

Maybe I could go with this: “I had a cranberry bagel this morning -- with English Farmhouse Cheddar.” 

Twitter believes all this will give me great pleasure. That I could be expressive, and it would have value to my friends, fellow consumers and perhaps marketers -- bagel manufacturers, cranberry bog growers, Italian cheese makers?

All this activity continues while Twitter apparently is for sale -- with Walt Disney, Google, and Salesforce sniffing around. Twitter stock has been volatile, way up earlier in the week and then a big collapse on Thursday -- down 20% after reports that Disney and Google are out.

Twitter wants consistent users offering insight on stuff that might yield monetization -- like insights on TV shows, cars, communication services and quinoa.

In particular, I guess Twitter would like a tweet that says: “Watched Fox’s ‘Pitch’ last night -- which I liked -- and at the same time it got me thinking about buying a great Toyota truck. And then there are ancient food grains to consider.”

Media companies will increasingly be dependent on deeper consumer/user data to work up algorithms to plan and target consumer product promotions my way.

Say what you will about Twitter, it has millions of ongoing active monthly users -- 66 million in the U.S. and around 310 million worldwide. Some believe the price tag for the company could be around $20 billion. It’s market capitalization on Thursday closed at $14.9 billion. 

From all this, Twitter is hoping my precious personal consumer data comes free of charge. But I’m a bit strategic -- especially since I’m a daily business news journalist. (And my opinion is already spread around social-media platforms.)

From a consumer point of view, however, we are speaking about another data set. While everyone might be worried about privacy issues, what if we all became key entrepreneurs -- in 140 word increments? 

So, in that regard, I’d say: “OK, Twitter. What it’s worth to you? Want to make a media deal with me and other consumers?” 
Hey, I might even switch to U.S. cream cheese.