Slashdot Mirror
Twitter To Add Money-Making Features
dreemteem writes "Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told reporters in Mexico City this week that the company expects to add revenue-generating features to the micro-blogging site in the fourth quarter, according to a report from Bloomberg.com."
So this will basically be used to decide when to astroturf.
Caveat Utilitor
140 cents should be enough for everybody.
So, the article says that they'll offer a "dashboard" which companies can use to see what users are twittering about them. How is this different from just putting a company name into the search box?
Also, the free Twitter API already allows for interesting data mining. For example, this little site monitors the popularity of the political parties in Germany: Wahlgetwitter. The users just write #Piratenpartei+ or #CDU- to show which party they like or not.
The worst thing this announcement could mean is that they'll charge for the API or exclude businesses from the search function.
they will become an irrelevent has-been 2 weeks later.
That's the downside?
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
Allow people to pay money to deliver electrical shocks to celebrities every time they "tweet" something stupid. They could make millions in a matter of minutes.
Of course, posting witty comments in Slashdot contributes way more to humanity.
Most people think tweeters just post where they are or what they are doing. A great number of people use twitter for publishing their opinions and interesting articles. It is not very different of Slashdot, it's just not topic-oriented and has a limit of 140 characters per post, what doesn't stop anyone from from making several posts or linking to a blog where the opinion is better explained.
How irrelevant the "tweet" is depends on the person.
Several news sources and stores also have twitter accounts, so the people can subscribe to them easier than they would with a RSS news reader. While some might argue they don't need it, it groups all the information in a format which is easier to read and makes any link you might want follow readily available.
The good, the evil and the vacuum tubes.
Damn inflation, I remember when you used to be able to give an opinion for 2 cents!
Damn inflation, I remember when you used to be able to give an opinion for 2 cents!
I take it you've never studied economics. Instead of boring you with lots of technical terminology and theory, I'll restrict my comments to real world transactions and use commonly understood terms.
In the marketplace of ideas, opinions typically come in two forms. The first is worth 5 cents (as in "Not worth a plug nickel"), and the latter is a premium product valued at 10 cents ("I wish I had a dime for every time ..."). And like in all markets, there are "wholesale" prices and "retail" prices. Those numbers represent the retail prices.
When exchanging goods or services, there is an underlying cost for each transaction that must be bourne by one or more of the participants. The difference between 10 cents and your two cent idea is, of course eight cents. This is the "markup" or "overhead".
Put simply, when you manufacture your idea, its wholesale price is two cents, but is sold in the marketplace at either 5 or 10 cents. Small amounts, to be sure, but that doesn't prevent entrepreneurial resellers from making much more, or for those with sufficient legal resources, from securing a patent and making millions!
My idea (for this post) was similarly worth two cents. That's not to say, however, that in the marketplace of ideas known as Slashdot, the laws of supply and demand don't apply. That means that there's high probability it will end up being worth zero cents. Or to use the English formative of Latin origin, nonsense.