Twitter is a Cash Cow in the Making | Hacker News Reader

Twitter is a Cash Cow in the Making

marketingpilgrim.com

14 pointstransburgh13 comments

So his only argument that Twitter is a protocol is that Seth Godin said that Twitter is a protocol. I think there is some truth to it, but it is nowhere near the level of information control that Google has achieved with Search. It's an invalid comparison, especially since 99% of apps operating on the Twitter protocol are completely asinine.

The mobile payment angle could be true, but its far from a sure thing. I tend to think most payments from mobile devices will be done through mobile web browsers, the same way we do them on a computer.

The piece closes by saying "The true power behind popular protocols can almost never be predicted" and "as Twitter grows it will have to remain observant of emerging trends of its users".

So you write an article predicting twitter will be a cash cow, and conclude by claiming the method of generating cash cannot be predicted? What makes this cash cow such a sure thing?

I strongly believe that Twitter will succeed, but this article is weak. The only real nugget is the Amazon Affiliate angle, and changing user links is borderline unethical and likely not a massive revenue generator.

The URL Control part is the key. A lot of spammers and scammers are already doing this themselves using TinyURL as a front for affilaite re-directs.

It might be morally questionable though for Twitter to hijack the Amazon links of the everyman who is just posting something with no intention of making a profit from it.

Would it? What if they gave us an Amazon Affiliate code field on the Twitter Settings page. If you enter a code, you get the credit for your links, if not Twitter does.

Most users who care would enter their own. The rest probably won't care or don't know enough to care.

Everyone is happy?

If Twitter could add a title tag to the shortened URL, showing the full address when hovered over, I'd be happy.

It might be morally questionable though for Twitter to hijack the Amazon links of the everyman who is just posting something with no intention of making a profit from it.

I don't have a problem with that if the link doesn't have any affiliate info. But it would be morally questionable for Twitter to replace existing affiliate info with their own.

Why?

I like the affiliate link idea, because that is something concrete and practical that they could have an 80% implementation for in a day if they wanted to.

I hope they have some great linguists and NLP people around too, because academically it's a great place to study how people use language naturally.

And not-academically, figuring out how to parse meaning from Twitter could be huge for contextual advertising and targeting, in a very non-privacy invading way.

"My girlfriend and I really hate this new potato peeler. Sweet, nevermind, Twitter popped up an ad for mypotatopeelers.com before I finished."

The comments by Mihai Secasiu are more insightful than the article itself.

Maybe Twitter could detect whenever a product name is used in a tweet, and turn that into a link to a list of places to buy it.

That's how Balsamiq uses Twitter for advertising. He has a Twitter alert for things like "mockup tools" and when he sees someone expressing a need his product fills, he sends an advert prefixed with a $$.

If Google tried to pull something like re-writing links into affiliate links they would be called evil.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com