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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.

With about half of Twitter users able to access Twitter Lists as they’re rolled out to everyone, independant Twitter list directory Listorious has been quick to launch and offer curated lists on a range of topics.

It’s interesting to see whether the relatively peer-led recommendation of Twitter lists will displace directories of individual users grouped by category such as WeFollow and Twellow. Obviously there are concerns about both the follower-inflation that everyone has seen from the Suggested User List presented to new users, as well as individuals worried about being pigeon-holed and lists becoming reciprocal favours rather than recommendations.

It’s also likely to diminish the value of the longstanding Twitter tradition of #followfriday.

From a business point of view it makes utter sense for Twitter to have some input/control of listing users – all the examples above have been relatively successful. What’s the betting that an option to promote a specific list could be in the monetisation plans? Spend some cash and your list could be promoted to everyone, or possibly replace the Suggested User List for a period of time?

Suddenly they’d have a route for grabbing sums like the $250,000 offered earlier this year by Jason Calacanis, without it being flagged up as obvious in a list of just 20 or so people.

And obviously list pages themselves offer individual sponsorship/promotional oppportunities…

As a user of Twitter, I’m undecided whether lists will be a positive thing on balance, but as a Twitter observer it’s one of the biggest steps they’ve made in a long time towards making money.