microblog

The New York Times has a nice little writeup about Twitpay, an experimental new app that lets you send payments using Twitter.

Here's the premise: Sign up, put some cash in your Twitpay account through another payment service like PayPal, and then send out a "tweet" to another Twitpay member, structured like "@josh twitpay $10 for beers." Twitpay takes a five-cent commission. Its founders are hoping that, eventually, it can be used for charity and disaster relief payments.

It's a nifty idea, though not for everyone. You don't get cash out of it, … Read more

Another sign that Twitter is finally growing up: The company has put out a job posting hunting for a product manager to help it start raking in revenue. The San Francisco start-up, flush with venture funding and media hype, has yet to make a cent.

"As Twitter's first product manager focused on revenue generation, you will play a defining role in the formulation of Twitter's business," the job description reads.

Gee! You don't say?

Twitter CEO Evan Williams has hinted that the future of Twitter lies in some sort of corporate accounts. And indeed, the … Read more

These data portability announcements keep rolling on: On Monday, Google announced that its Google Friend Connect product, which plugs social-networking features into participating sites, is now compatible with Twitter.

So what does this mean? Well, if you go to a site that uses Google Friend Connect, you can opt to use your Twitter credentials to log in to it. Then, as the official Google blog explained, you can then find which of your other Twitter friends are using the same site. Also, you can send out a "tweet" announcing that you've joined up.

Twitter was one of … Read more

Zannel, a media-rich microblogging service that launched in late 2007, has a new and free iPhone application that puts many of its features on to the popular portable device.

Called CityWatch, the app takes a similar approach to Loopt and Whrrl in allowing you to see and interact with what's going on in your general proximity. It does this by taking each item that's been posted to Zannel and overlaying it onto a map using its geo tag. This also includes items from other networks, like Twitter, Flickr, and eventually any other service that has an open API.… Read more

Twitter may be the leader in the micro-blogging space, but it's missing key features--features its competitors offer. Will Twitter pick up on these omissions? We know groups are coming to Twitter, but we're not so sure about some of these other useful features...

Friendfeed: Twitter++

Although some say Friendfeed isn't a direct competitor to Twitter, I think it is. Twitter has one way to deliver content to the service--you type a thought in 140 characters or fewer and post it--but consider the fact that Friendfeed can do that in a flash, as well as import your blog, … Read more

Another one bites the dust? Pownce, a would-be Twitter rival that was heavily hyped due to the involvement of Digg co-founder Kevin Rose, is closing its doors in two weeks.

It's not quite going away, according to a post from Pownce founder Leah Culver on the start-up's official blog. The technology has been sold to blog platform Six Apart, which runs TypePad and Movable Type. And its two full-time employees, Culver and Mike Malone, will be joining Six Apart's team.

"We'll be closing down the main Pownce Web site two weeks from today, December 15,&… Read more

This can't be good. Just a few months after restricting its U.K.-based text-messaging number due to cost issues, Twitter has done the same for Canada.

The microblogging service has cut outbound SMS messages for the folks up north, citing "unexpected changes in our billing." Costs had been doubling for a few months.

Basically, this means Canadian Twitter users will be able to send numbers to its short code, 21212, but not receive them that way. They can instead use the Twitter mobile site or one of many third-party mobile apps to see what their friends … Read more

Maybe it wasn't just egregious Valley gossip-baiting when Federated Media CEO John Battelle asked Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg earlier this month if his company was going to buy Twitter.

Kara Swisher of AllThingsD reported early Monday morning that actual acquisition talks held between the two companies have fallen through.

The deal would have been for $500 million in Facebook stock, Swisher wrote.

Facebook's not big on acquisitions. The only sizable purchase the company has made was of a start-up called Parakey, and that was really just a way to bring on board founder Blake Ross.

Twitter's a … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--In a panel at the Web 2.0 Summit, Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams wouldn't concretely answer one of Silicon Valley's biggest unanswered questions: how the company plans to make money.

But he gave some strong indications. Hint: it's not advertising.

He spoke obliquely of a possible business model that we've heard whispers about before, corporate accounts for businesses that want to use Twitter. Twitter is a communication channel, he said, and what it can do is "charge the people who want to use that communication channel commercially."

He named companies like … Read more