Though Twitter, the popular microblogging service is ubiquitous in the online world, headlines for the company have been fleeting for much of the last year. Moreover, in the discussions I’ve been privy to at various industry events, the consensus seemed to be building that Twitter had reached its zenith and had begun its slow glide to obscurity. Facebook and LinkedIn status updates and location-aware social applications like Gowalla and Foursquare have been growing and seem to better answer users’ desires to stay instantly connected to the social grid. The lack of a strategy to monetize the service has kept advertisers and major brand marketers at bay along with their budgets and ability to facilitate innovation and consumer adoption.
Alas, an early spring chirp was finally heard this week signaling a possible resurgence. At the Chirp Conference Twitter execs announced a series of significant changes that address much of what the industry has been crowing about:
• The really big news is promoted tweets, a new advertising platform where advertisers can buy access into a topical Twitter stream. With some similarities to Google’s AdWords platform, this might just start building a justification for the billion-dollar valuation the revenue-neutral service has earned thus far.
• User Streams, a new data service provided by Twitter to desktop applications. This allows developers access to real-time data directly from Twitter. Look for a flock of new Twitter-enabled applications in the near future.
• A developer roadmap to calm the fears of developers and marketers about the service and where it is going. Look for increased functionality around location awareness, annotations, and other features.
• A new home page to address the high abandonment rate of new subscribers. Early tests show a 20% increase in retention.
Along with the technical discussions, Twitter management also shared data about the service that has long been speculated and rarely confirmed. It turns out that Twitter is bigger than we all expected. According to cofounder Biz Stone, Twitter has nearly 106 million registered users and 180 million unique visitors a month—far above many previous industry expectations. To date, the service has been tight-lipped about this type of information. Even more impressive, Twitter is growing at a rate of 300,000 new users a day, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Twitter still has a rough flight ahead. Archenemy Facebook is gearing up for the annual F8 Conference, which promises the unveiling of new features and direction for the 400 million user–strong social network. But for now, Twitter can enjoy the warm glow of springtime optimism.
I’ve been recommending Chris Anderson’s book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, to friends and colleagues since I read it. Whether or not you agree or disagree with his conclusions, the book is filled with interesting historical and anecdotal accounts of online business model evolutions and the economic, technical and sociological changes that have precipitated an unarguable shift in how we conduct business. Anderson, the editor of Wired Magazine, an active blogger, and the author of the highly regarded The Long Tail, is an entertaining and engaging writer.
I’m trying to conceptualize what 100 billion of anything is. What would a 100 billion of something look like. How long would it take me to drink the coffee made from 100 billion coffee beans? How many pounds of coffee add up to 100 billion coffee beans? To answer this question I naturally go to Google and search for “coffee beans in a pound” and the light goes on. In the past year, according to a recent 
