Big dollar signs for microblogging service Twitter

How tweet it is. Twitter, the microblogging service that is changing how people communicate, has closed its long-rumored funding round.

Spark Capital and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos led the round, the San Francisco company's third, with existing investors Union Square Ventures and Digital Garage participating. Spark Capital's Bijan Sabet, an active Tweeter, joins the board.

Twitter, whose motto is "What are you doing?", is not divulging financial details, but word in the blogosphere is that it landed $15 million for a valuation of slightly less than $100 million. That's a lot of dollars for these characters.

Twitter will use some of the windfall to become a bit more reliable. Never before have users been so upbeat about a service that goes down as often as Twitter. It has already begun to take some steps in that direction. (Wrote TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington: "They are the only service I know of where users rejoice when they simply manage to keep their service live.") The frequent service outages were causing some consternation.

In a blog post today, co-founder Biz Stone talked about Twitter's aspirations to become a communications utility.

Twitter, which connects people through short, real-time messages, is certainly becoming more mainstream, with 1.2 million unique visitors in May, by one account. More people are ...

... sending updates (called tweets) of 140 characters or less from their computers, PDAs and phones or following other people's tweets.

The Los Angeles Fire Department has gotten kudos for twittering. Businesses are starting to use Twitter for customer service. Even the Mars Phoenix lander is broadcasting Earth-bound tweets.

Though the sheer number of users still remains small, they average at least 15 tweets a day. That's in part because Twitter gives people some of the instant intimacy they crave.

According to a new survey from Harris Interactive, people are gravitating away from e-mail and toward other forms of online communication because:

--59% say there is more immediacy, making other forms of online communication more preferable than e-mail;

--52% say there is more interchange (it's more like having a live conversation because they can communicate spontaneously);

--48% say there is more impact, meaning their message "isn’t buried in a pile of e-mail"; and

--46% say it feels more casual or intimate than e-mail.

Twitter is also often first to break news about natural disasters, and it comes comes alive when important events take place such as Tiger Woods winning the U.S. Open. A Berkeley grad student even Twittered his way out of an Egyptian jail and is now working with Twitter to create an emergency broadcast system.

The more people spend their lives microblogging, the more people are finding new ways to keep it short.

For those who want to get up to speed on the emerging new Twitter language, check out this dictionary.

-- Jessica Guynn

Twitter logo courtesy of Twitter

Comments

[jansegers]

Twitter isn't an isolated phenomenon any more...

Some microblogs worldwide:

This list is a personal choice and based on three criteria: ease of operability, quality of service and experienced functional up-time.

general
twitter.com
jaiku.com
pownce.com
beemood.com
twoorl.com
yonkly.com
kwippy.com
microblogr.com
brightkite.com
plurk.com
secondbrain.com

Chinese
fanfou.com
zuosa.com
komoo.cn

Portuguese
gozub.com

Brazilian
telog.com.br

Indian
snockles.com

Singaporean
tiish.com

Italian
meemi.com

Spanish
khaces.com

Turkish
nolyo.com

French
noumba.net
poodz.com
tapioka.ca

Korean
playtalk.net

Japanese
feecle.jp

German
niimo.com

Polish
blip.pl

Dutch
numpa.nl

Portuguese
gozub.com

Russian
smspr.ru

Arabic
watwet.com

Romanian
cirip.ro

Mexican
mexicodiario.com

Czech
http://drbz.cz

special
tumblr.com
hictu.com
babl.nl
floort.com
help.com
justtell.us
talkaboutadate.com
adocu.com

multiple posting

hellotxt.com

The most exhaustive list I know about is the list made up by thw www.thws.cn/articles/twitter-clones.html

[Henry Casavets]

Rumour has it the dutch microblog Numpa.nl is also preparing statement about major funding for int. rollout. Anybody got more info about this?

[Roger]

A revolution in communication is unfolding. The avalanche of information is too much to process through conventional means such as static Web sites, or even blogs! :)

So people are turning to other media. With Twitter and other microblogging services, we can use personal connections to tap into the collective conscious, as I have discussed in my own blog, TwitterThoughts.

However, if we want the most valuable information it is critical to select very carefully who to follow. In so doing, irrelevant distractions in fact diminish. Partly this is because of Twitter's clean interface (as well as its 140 character limit), so it's going to be interesting to see if traffic will be sustained if Twitter takes to advertising to develop its revenue stream. A subscription-based service may be a better option. Let's hope they're smart enough to do their market research to get it right first time.

[Aldo Bender]

The absolute dearth of revenue among social networks, blogs and other “social media” has persisted despite more than four years of intense and sometimes numbing experimentation all aimed at turning such sites into money-makers.

[Jeff]

Interesting that there is so much analysis of why Twitter has become such a phenomenon in communication - yet would anyone have predicted it even 1-year ago?

In retrospect we should have had a clue based on success of Short Messaging Services on mobile - add a social networking aspect to SMS and you have twitter.

The reason I'm hooked...

1. Get to the point quickly - with 140 characters - no room to ramble
2. Great for networking - I can reach people I would normally have trouble reachin gin other ways
3. Free flow...I discover things about people in a conversational way that would be impossible any other way
4. Market research - I develop informational products and courses - twitter is an excellent source of research re: topics, frustrations and opportunities.

Sorry - I've spent too long already, have to get back to tweeting!