April 16th, 2009
Twitter's big day: Revenue plan? Google deal? Oprah's touch?
Twitter co-founder Evan Williams sent out the cryptic tweet earlier today - and now, some tidbits of information have trickled out, giving us some things to ponder as it relates to this news.
Of course, the big news would be a revenue model for the business. Twitter has gone on the record to say that it will announce some sort of revenue plan in the first half of the year.
Maybe it’s an ad deal with Google. On Google’s earnings call this afternoon, Google CEO Eric Schmidt pointed to Twitter as an example that innovation is alive and well in Silicon Valley - and that he would be happy to talk to Twitter about ad revenue. Earlier in the day, The New York Times’ Bits blog published a post that said Twitter is talking to companies about cutting distribution deals, not to search for a buyer.
But if I were a bettin’ man, I’d put my money on news out of Chicago, specifically the studios of the Oprah Winfrey Show. The Bits blog reported late this afternoon that Friday’s Oprah show would be about Twitter, possibly even welcoming Williams as a guest. Oprah, who has a reputation of having a Midas Touch, already has 30,000 followers on Twitter and has yet to write one tweet. Ashton Kutcher - who’s on track to reach 1 million followers on Twitter - will be her guest.
Maybe Fred Wilson, the Union Square Ventures partner who was an early investor in Twitter and also a Twitter board member, was also being cryptic when he told the New York Times that “All the people you’ve heard of and more are coming to Twitter saying, ‘We want to do something with you.’”
Sam Diaz is a senior editor at ZDNet. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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