commodity? no, bandwidth is the commodity and people *do* pay for text (sms) in a very "un"commodity-like fashion. think about that again, people have a "willingness to pay" for text - even if it is a very peculiar granularity of datum / bandwidth / computation. compare that with a willingness to pay for snippets of music - ringtones, say - and you can see very different values & willingness to pay for different granularity of data ($2.99 for a ringtone and 99 cents for the mp3 and 10 bucks for the WAV on a CD) ...
that twitter can deploy a system which truncates the size of a message text to 140 characters and take a split with the carrier is *building* a business ... they reduced the size that a user has traditionally identified as being a message text and added features to build the business of tweet ...
in this case "relevance" "reputation" "recognition" - the concept of "universal time" - the wide cast of alleged "twitter" personality-types or characters that are quite simply just like you & me ... it is all very interesting but alas just another way to communicate ... to internet
far from a commodity and unlike blogging in general ... the business will survive because it replaces in a succinct and effective manner the notion of "location location location" - even though it is a "network" platform in every sense of the word ...
with due respect, you missed the very important issue that twitter must maintain to survive - trust ...
some questions per chance
what do you think the split with the carrier on the text is? what percentage of users would prefer a different split (say i want more money to go to twitter than the carrier & am willing to pay in lieu of advertising? - my at&t dsl service doesn't get that yet - i say "no" to at&t marketing since i already pay for the service that i want - send the "spam"/"marketing promotion" bandwidth waste to those willing to tolerate it - twitter may face this at some point soon as they seek to scale)? how would you compare this to how apple & att worked out their platform & splits for both hardware and use?
don't discount the signal (or signal callers) for the noise of the message and the medium ... nice article!
All Comments
that twitter can deploy a system which truncates the size of a message text to 140 characters and take a split with the carrier is *building* a business ... they reduced the size that a user has traditionally identified as being a message text and added features to build the business of tweet ...
in this case "relevance" "reputation" "recognition" - the concept of "universal time" - the wide cast of alleged "twitter" personality-types or characters that are quite simply just like you & me ... it is all very interesting but alas just another way to communicate ... to internet
far from a commodity and unlike blogging in general ... the business will survive because it replaces in a succinct and effective manner the notion of "location location location" - even though it is a "network" platform in every sense of the word ...
with due respect, you missed the very important issue that twitter must maintain to survive - trust ...
some questions per chance
what do you think the split with the carrier on the text is? what percentage of users would prefer a different split (say i want more money to go to twitter than the carrier & am willing to pay in lieu of advertising? - my at&t dsl service doesn't get that yet - i say "no" to at&t marketing since i already pay for the service that i want - send the "spam"/"marketing promotion" bandwidth waste to those willing to tolerate it - twitter may face this at some point soon as they seek to scale)? how would you compare this to how apple & att worked out their platform & splits for both hardware and use?
don't discount the signal (or signal callers) for the noise of the message and the medium ... nice article!