Look at all those people talking about the eurocup!
Also:
> The problem with advertising on Twitter is the same as it is on Facebook: it's an unwelcome intrusion.
You mean, like television commercials? Which are the foundation of an I don't even know how many billion dollar industry. I'm not saying it's a slam dunk they'll get this right but there's a lot of evidence out their in the world that eyeballs can be turned into money just about anywhere. It seems a bit hasty to just dismiss all of that.
There's also plenty of buying intent to work with like this:
Me: Yes, like TV commercials and youtube commercials and the multitude of unwelcome intrusions that do have some effect, that provide some value for the intruder but which are low grade on the developing advertising food chain.
Harry: ...the foundation of an I don't even know how many billion dollar industry.
Me: You mean like the multi-billion newspaper industry? I'm not saying that TV will go the way of newspapers but you remember TV happened before the net right? The vector today is towards ads that give people what they want, not ads that impose things on people (these won't go away but they aren't a high-value area).
I actually found an interesting use case with Twitter a little over a week ago when Pier 29 in San Francisco was caught on fire. I initially heard about it on Twitter from one of my friends. I instantly searched for "Pier 29" and found a plethora of relevant images and links as the story was developing.
Sure, searching Google News or going on the /r/sanfrancisco subreddit might've given similar results, but there was an intense amount of content developing in real-time. I was able to see images of the fire from different angles and perspectives and I felt that this was a strong feature that Twitter has. I personally think that Twitter's business model _relies_ on having a large userbase. Using Facebook would be fine with a small userbase, but Twitter's model is much different.
A similar use case: I noticed the sunlight on the wall of my apartment's courtyard was a bright orange so searched twitter for "Berlin sunset" and right away found a gorgeous image someone had just made 5 minutes ago.
Your impression is wrong in this case. Let's take something topical:
https://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/eurocup
Look at all those people talking about the eurocup!
Also:
> The problem with advertising on Twitter is the same as it is on Facebook: it's an unwelcome intrusion.
You mean, like television commercials? Which are the foundation of an I don't even know how many billion dollar industry. I'm not saying it's a slam dunk they'll get this right but there's a lot of evidence out their in the world that eyeballs can be turned into money just about anywhere. It seems a bit hasty to just dismiss all of that.
There's also plenty of buying intent to work with like this:
https://twitter.com/AllMadeUp21/status/219518855091978240
That's just an example that took me 10 seconds to find. Get enough people talking and some of them are going to talk about things they want to buy.