Despite the fact that it exploded on to the scene and has become one of the most popular websites in the world, Twitter has still not managed to figure out its business model. A new deal that could get Twitter as much as $100 million, though, may give the website the time it needs to become profitable.
The funding would come from an investor group that includes mutual-fund giant T. Rowe Price Group Inc. and private-equity firm Insight Venture Partners, both of which have not yet invested any money into Twitter. Existing Twitter investors are also expected to participate in this …read more

Russell is bang on, microblogging should be based on a queuing system and not whatever it is now. Hindsight is 20/20 of course, no one thought Twitter or microblogging would take off like this.
The lesson from Twitter is that microblogs aren’t Content Management Systems at all, but are instead Messaging systems, and have to be architected as such. SMTP or EDI are our models here, not publishing or blogs.
Here’s how a microblog system has to work to scale: All the messages created by users have to go into a Queue when they’re created, and an external process then has to …read more

The day after Canada Day and we have a new, and potentially exciting, microblogging service to play around with.  Identi.ca might seem like “just another Twitter clone”, but I think they are really onto something here.
Corvida, Sarah Perez, and Marshall Kirkpatrick all have it right on target.  Sure, it’s early days and Identi.ca doesn’t have all the features that we’re used to, but they have one thing that Twitter, Pownce, and Jaiku all missed: the are offering the sever software as open source that can we can install ourselves.
Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, even FriendFeed, all rely on increasing their own capacity …read more

Ah Twitter.  The blogerati are raising their glasses to you in homage of your passing.  FriendFeed is standing in the corner being polite, warm, and charming.  At the bar, people are shaking their heads, talking about going to FriendFeed’s place after the wake…
Hold on a second here.  I’m not seeing a huge decline in Tweets, course it’s a little hard to tell since I can only pull 20 reqs/hr through Twhirl.
The discussion and debate about Twitter’s untimely (maybe ironic since they just got a whack o’ cash) demise seems to focus on the Replies tab being toast since Tuesday (yeah …read more

Great news for Twitter, they’ve secured more funding:
Project: Runway Twitter will become a sustainable business supported by a revenue model. However, our biggest opportunities will be worth pursuing only when we achieve our vision of Twitter as a global communication utility. To reach our goal, Twitter must be reliable and robust. Private funding gives us the runway we need to stay focused on the infrastructure that will help our business take flight. We will continue hiring systems engineers, operators, and architects, as well as consultants, scientists, and other professionals to help us realize our …read more

This week we’ve seen both the release of a new version of Skype—Skype 4.0 Beta 1 for Windows initial release – Skype Garage—and a preview version of Twhirl that includes Seesmic playback—Seesmic Blog: Play Seesmic videos in Twhirl client—while they haven’t been connected previously, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
Looking at the new Skype, it draws and centralizes your attention to the task at hand, communication with others.  Twhirl is doing the same for microblogging.  We’ve seen this before and when it’s happened great things have always followed.
When?
First the web browser.  Remember gopher and newsreaders and the other required …read more

Earlier today I say Mark Evan’s ponder getting back into the Pownce habit (which ironically is down/sluggish right now):
I’d really like to use Pownce because it has a richer set of features, including things such as the ability to share files. And while Twitter become the dominant player, Pownce continues to quietly make it ways as the second-place player that tries harder. The biggest challenge facing Pownce is there’s a raging party happening in Twitter’s backyard, and no one wants to leave a rockin’ party for a party with fewer people – even if the Twitter party gets out of …read more

Tim Walker and I were chatting on Twitter this morning about Twitter, Jaiku, and Pownce.  It started with my question: “How many folks here also update Pownce and Jaiku? Both have fallen off my radar, eventhough both have more features.”
Sure I could update both Pownce and Jaiku through Twhirl, but why?  I don’t go there to check replies, conversations or threads.  Through the conversation of tweets and DMs, Tim and I agreed that this smelled like a great blog post.  He beat me to the punch:
Is that enough to explain its success? I don’t know — but I’d love to …read more

Marshall Kirkpatrick and I were chatting tonight and he mentioned the new WP theme called “Prologue” that has some very Twitter-like features.  We were also both musing how we were sitting chatting at DEMO while other folks were blogging it.  Of course if you can’t be first–be smarter (I think Marshall might beat me in that department tonight).
From the WP.com blog, Matt let us know about this new theme and what it could be used for:
Some folks have suggested that using WordPress, Prologue, and RSS you could create a pretty effective distributed version of Twitter. This isn’t something we’re personally …read more