Twitter

Twitter just announced the financing we did with them.

My post explaining why we are so excited about this investment is on the Union Square Ventures blog.

The photo decorating this post is called "Twittering Machine" and it was done by Paul Klee in 1922.

I guess Klee really was a visionary.

I certainly have become a twittering machine and I am really enjoying it.

Comments

[Michael Sippey]

Congrats on the investment! Excuse the long comment, but I just love the description of Klee's painting at MoMA.org:

The "twittering" in the title doubtless refers to the birds, while the "machine" is suggested by the hand crank. The two elements are, literally, a fusing of the natural with the industrial world. Each bird stands with beak open, poised as if to announce the moment when the misty cool blue of night gives way to the pink glow of dawn. ... Upon closer inspection, however, an uneasy sensation of looming menace begins to manifest itself. Composed of a wiry, nervous line, these creatures bear a resemblance to birds only in their beaks and feathered silhouettes; they appear closer to deformations of nature. The hand crank conjures up the idea that this "machine" is a music box, where the birds function as bait to lure victims to the pit over which the machine hovers.

Yikes! OK, then. Back to Twittering.

[Andrew]

the biz model would be to sell to a mobile phone carrier or perhaps Apple.

[Alex Iskold]

Great news, very excited about this!

Alex

[Ben]

This is good news. I hope Twitter is successful long-term. I feel like they found the perfect equilibrium of function and usability relative to all their competitors.

[Giordano]

Hi Fred,

congratulations! One observation: in your post on USV blog, you talk about the Internet all the way, and refer to Twitter as an Internet platform. But, Twitter is also (and maybe primarly) a mobile platform, and I think the more interesting applications will come from that.

Also, if you look at the worldwide scenario, it´s clear that mobile, simply for a matter of diffusion and accessibility, is the truly global platform.

And, while in some countries (the US would be one), high speed networks are bringing the convergence of internet and mobile, if you look at most of the world (take India), mobile is and will be for a long time a completely different beast.

The point of this rant? Nothing... I just think that US companies tend to think of the Internet as the start and end of everything, while the rest of the world doesnt... there´s a huge business opportunity in looking out of your backyard.

Cheers,
Giordano

[Dimitar Vesselinov]

Congratulations! I suppose this must be called YAGI (Yet Another Great Investment). Fred, may I have your "golden" pen?

[Fraser]

Twitter + 30boxes = Twapper (and that's one of the top 10 Twitter applications)... just wait for Wesabe api + Twitter api apps.

I like tequila shots' (and Giordano, above) view of "Twitter as mobile platform".

[howard Lindzon]

I just peed so would leave a longer comment but must go twitter the damn thing.

[Tim Marman]

Congrats on the investment - always good to see someone invest in a service that they use and understand personally :)

[Robert]

Fred-

Congrats on the investment and hope you are feeling better. I am still struggling with the business application of this..but maybe I am looking in the wrong place or there isn't one? I have been tinkering with it for a while. A post on the value and use cases would be really helpful.

Robert

[Jill]

Too Perfect. The union will only elevate both sides!

[Martin Edic]

Am I the only one who thinks that Twitter is something only a techie would love? In Techcrunch's post on the financing this am he mentions that they have 300,000 users. This seems incredibly low for the amount of buzz they've received. It also seems to indicate a potential problem with scaling since the service could be pretty server intensive if it takes off and there would be zero tolerance among users for downtime- it's a real time communications thing.

Not to rain on a parade but I just don't see it- am I missing something?

[Vijay]

Fred,

Just a stupid thought. Why cant we sync twitter with calender. May be we can have a Outlook or Thunderbird plugin which will capture the feeds and time stamp.

[Andy Swan]

I hope the term sheet came in blocks of 160 characters

[Nate Westheimer]

Hi Fred,

This is not a dish to Twitter or USV (needless to say I'm a fan of both), but a genuine question about trajectory:

I'm curious if there were specific plans involved in getting a more mainstream audience using the service other than via viral methods. A quick look at their traffic charts since launch, and it appears that their early-adopter, enthusiast crowd failed to bring the service mainstream. I know this may be a bit early to say, but I've witnessed my type "pitching" Twitter to their non-techie friends several times, and have found a zero-to-low adoption rate among them.

So, obviously there's huge appeal for this to go main-stream, but the question I have is how. Without revealing specifics, I'd be interested in how much marketing these guys plan for and what their general approach will be.

It would be a great lesson for all of us building web-based tools.

Thanks.

Nate Westheimer
BricaBox

[Gordon R. Vaughan]

I really like Twitter, much better than Jaiku or Pownce, I guess because of the simplicity.

Twitter's functionality is pretty basic, but it just works (well, OK, most of the time). Anyone can argue that since it's simple, it's not worth much, but at the same time it's simple like phone service, which is a pretty big industry.

There's already a lot of different ways you can use Twitter, and I'm sure many more are yet to be discovered.

In any case, I'm already using it every day, more than most apps, even more than Google, and so are lots of other folks.