140Char

For a while it seemed as if building a third-party application for Twitter was a route to instant fortune (as were Facebook apps before it, and iPhone apps after it). But judging by the eventual sale of Twitter link tracker and aggregator Twitturly, it appears that bubble may now have burst.

Since launching in April 2008, rivals such as Tweetmeme and Topsy have joined the Twitter aggregator space – and when founder Joel Strellner put the site up for auction, just 5 bids came in, with a final price of ‘no more than $8,500′ (HT Techcrunch).

Having said that, Strellner has moved onto other things, leaving the site with a Google PR of 6, Alexa ranking of 40,106, and most importantly, only around 1000 Unique Users per day. And less than 1000 visitors per day definitely doesn’t get the big bucks.

Twitturly

The only thing I can’t understand is why there wasn’t more effort to boost PR and visitor numbers immediately prior to the sale? Then again, the auction details reveal Strellner is working full time, didn’t want to invest more in costs (the EC2 server costs were apparently around $3k per month), and has also recently found his free time taken away by becoming a father (Something which I can totally understand!)

It will be interesting to see whether the new owner can make use of the 622GB data, the agreement to access the Summize (Twitter Search) API an unlimited amount, and a site which claimed 5000 UUs per day.

Twitter website traffic has overtaken both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal for April 2009, as picked up by PaidContent and expanded on by ReadWriteWeb.

Which is a handy stat, but….

Are we really comparing like for like, or is this as misleading as comparing print and online figures?

For starters, we’re looking at website traffic, and although publication has numerous ways to be accessed online, I’d risk assuming that Twitter’s proportion of mobile and desktop client access is greater than that of the newspaper sites – which probably means the numbers went past the paper sites long ago.

And where’s the measures of interaction for comparison? While not every Twitter user is interacting, and newspaper sites are building in increasing routes to conversations and communities, surely it’s the engagement, interaction and effectiveness of Twitter versus other sites which is of as much importance? Even when it’s breaking news, e.g. Mumbai, the ability to converse with both the source and others is built into Twitter to a far greater extent than the paper sites.

Finally for a comparison – what amount of data is being generated by the different sites?

That’s surely of major importance considering the changes happening in general searching:

First hands on test with Wolfram Alpha

Google search tools moving closer to ‘real-time’

And considering the current wave of new and improved Twitter search tools:

Scoopler

Twitscoop

Tweetmeme

Oh, and major changes to Twitter Search itself.

Whether or not the current buzz and celebrity/mainstream adoption continues, or whether a backlash increases along with the pretty high drop-out rate from people trying Twitter for the first time, it’s the levels of data and engagement which are key to the longterm success, and routes to monetization for Twitter, rather than sheer mass audience numbers. Particularly when the types of both advertiser and advertising which are going to be most effective will also be quite different from traditional publishing outlets.

It’s always interesting following the various rumours concering who might be buying Twitter etc, but it’s a lot more fun when Twitter itself starts making a lot of changes – particularly when co-founder Biz Stone is publicly dismissing the rumours and saying Twitter isn’t for sale.

• Twitter search is going to get a lot more interesting (Cnet)

Twitter search will soon crawl links included in Tweets and that content, along with a reputation ranking system – as confirmed by Twitter VP of Operations, Santosh Jayaram, who was formerly VP of Search Quality for Google.

• Enhanced new follower emails (LousGray)

New follower emails include the new follower’s name, Twitter username, and picture. They also include the number of updates, number of people they follow, and number of followers they have, plus the ability to block them from within the email.

• Twitter replaces TinyURL with Bit.ly as url shortener (RWW)

Until now, Twitter automatically shortened links with TinyURL, but the switch to Bit.ly (Which I use anyway), means a lot more analytics, as well as an increase in reliability (given as the primary reason for the switch).

Considering Twitter’s self-monetisation (rather than selling) was scheduled for early this year, it’s not hard to see the increase in data capabilities from Search and Bit.ly, which could easily tie-in to an upsell for businesses etc using the service.

Meanwhile the issue of mainstream adoption and scaling of email alerts is something which is affecting businesses and individuals, and is something 3rd party services were already capitalising on.

What happens next?

Aside from the integration of all of the data tools into one package for a premium, it’s interesting to note that Twitter hasn’t dabbled in the client space yet – is this somewhere where they’re far happier with 3rd parties competing with each other?

Theoretically it could be building itself up pre-sale, but given the potential of the service with the additional data it will now provide, this seems less likely.

What the new search functionality will mean is that linking from Twitter will suddently become a lot more important than the current traffic driving (as the links are designed no-follow at the moment), and for websites and blogs, perhaps the additional data will lead to various ranking systems placing a big value on Twitter presence.

There are so many interesting visualisations of data around, I almost hesitate to mention any. But Twittersheep is interesting because it takes a similar approach to Wordle, but applies it to your Twitter followers, rather than your own account.

My (@badgergravling) Twittersheep result (Click to see full size)

Which is a useful tool for seeing what friends and followers are interested in, and also handy if you need a quick and easy way to display that type of data to someone.

The other bonus is that it only requires your username, not your password.