Twitter and the Micro-Messaging Revolution: Communication, Connections, and Immediacy—140 Characters at a Time

43 : Twitter and the Micro-Messaging Revolution

The Future of

Micro-Messaging

Already it’s clear that micro-messaging is moving in

several directions. While Twitter is becoming a platform

for broad communication and personal updates alike,

services such as Yammer and Present.ly have cropped

up to meet corporate needs for internal communication.

Beyond those trends, several compelling patterns and

questions are beginning to emerge.

Perhaps the top issue in micro-messaging is that

power in the channel is still up for grabs. Put another

way, it’s not yet clear who will be able to make money

on the phenomenon. While Twitter has grabbed a huge

percentage of early adopters, it has yet to establish any

significant revenue streams. Of course, Twitter benefits

from network effects—i.e., it gets more useful as more

people join it—giving it a little time to figure out

viable business models (see the box on page 45 about

challenges for the company). But in the past, online

companies such as CompuServe, Prodigy, AOL, and

even MySpace have lost dominance after gaining similar

substantial early-mover advantages.

14

Moreover, alternate models don’t all rely on wide-

spread adoption. The enterprise providers, for instance

(none of which is built on the Twitter API), report that

customers with as few as five employees find micro-

messaging useful for internal communication. Assuming

companies are or become ...