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by benofsky 5444 days ago
Twitter's data set is incredibly valuable; Twitter won't make money from ads, they will make money from analyses of their data [1]. Developing infrastructure and software that can analyse the sheer quantity of data Twitter generates takes time — and money. But, when they finally crack it they will be extremely profitable. It's much easier for Twitter to do this opposed to Facebook (who I would say is also interested in doing this) because of Twitter's public by default culture (/policies).

[1] If evidence is needed: they just bought BackType; They're starting to lock down and sell their APIs rather than give it away for free as they realise the data's immense value.
2 comments
LargeWu 5444 days ago
I'm curious to know what kind of data Twitter has that is that valuable. Just because you have a lot of data doesn't mean it's that valuable.

I used to analyze direct marketing campaigns for a major big-box retailer. They had literally billions of rows of transactional data that they could tie to specific customers, and despite attempting to harness the power of that data, most of their direct marketing campaigns didn't even move the needle.

So, whenever I hear "But, when they finally crack it they will be extremely profitable", I can't help but thinking this is nothing but a bunch of handwaving. I'm sure everybody at Twitter is real smart and they're working hard on this problem, but until they start bringing in some real money, I'll remain skeptical.

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benofsky 5444 days ago
Just as an example from my own experiences: I was able to predict the winner of the XFactor within 1% of the final vote, two hours prior to the final [1]. I've also written an algorithm that can with 80% accuracy detect a news story will come out of a group of tweets. There is a lot that can be done with this data.

[1] http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0115/122426...

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dotcoma 5444 days ago
ok, but do they really need 800 million (or 400 million) to turn backtype and other companies and/or ideas into a working business?
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fatalisk 5444 days ago
I think they do need this amount of money in order to stay competitive with the big guys Google and Facebook. They could be more easily outbid in acquisitions if they weren't competitive with capital.
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dotcoma 5443 days ago
Yes but, unlike Google and Facebook, they're not a real company. They're a start-up on VC welfare.
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