So there we all were scratching our heads wondering how Twitter actually made a profit? And then it decided to change its strategy by scouting the world for talent to hire for its new business team to help secure much needed revenue. Well, the announcement was made today that it has acquired Tweetie but I am not surprised at all and I am expecting a few more acquisitions yet.
Only last month we were told that an advertising platform was imminent and that is not the only area Twitter has been looking at. Over the last few months I have been liaising with Twitter’s team directly on a number of things and through my liaison I have seen several traditional Twitter third-party applications either be shutdown or kindly asked to have their USP’s removed. 
In January, Twitter changed its automation rules on its Wiki for developers using the API. Now don’t get too confused I am not just talking about autobots that follow people mindlessly. Twitter now classes automation as any bulk following or unfollowing tools – many of which most normal Twitter users actual use to trim their accounts. So Twitter management applications like Twitter Karma, Refollow and several others have had to change their services accordingly so they could continue operating and offering us a service. Twitter Karma without bulk unfollow – seems a tad pointless to me although I did like its service before.
I expect Twitter to launch an all singing, all dancing application in 2010 that has a number of automated services that only Twitter is allowed to provide. This is where it will make it’s extra much needed revenue from. What will this do to the Twitter eco-system that we all love though? Twitter has grown extensively due to the popularity of it’s third-party applications. Will a huge home grown application ruin what’s great about it or will it give control of the Twitter game back to the guys that actually invented it? Time will tell.
Cross posted on the Tweasier Blog
Chris Norton is the founder of Prohibition and an award winning communications consultant with more than twenty years’ experience. He was a lecturer at Leeds Beckett University and has had a varied PR career having worked both in-house and in a number of large consultancies. He is an Integrated PR and social media blogger and writes on a wide variety of blogs across a huge amount of topics from digital marketing, social media marketing right through to technology and crisis management.
