Following on from my previous post on the fast-food like properties of web-content I thought I would look at the service which embodies the latest acceleration in content consumption, Twitter.

For the uninitiated, a ‘tweet’ (as referred to in this post’s title) is a single message sent via the Twitter service. Twitter is a short-message system which can be accessed by numerous applications and devices; primarily, but not restricted to, web, IM and mobile. Messages are by default public and therefore you could think of it as ‘mini-blogging’ where messages can be posted as easily as sending an SMS or IM.

The rise of Twitter in the early adopting set (lets face it, it hasn’t hit mass market yet) has seen the introduction of a new, even more throw-away type of content. The plethora of states, moods and emotions punctuated by links to sometimes vaguely interesting content really leaves a faint impression. The experience lacks cohesion and any real filter determining significance or relevance of a particular content item. This gives it a sort of fun lightness and I guess the beauty of it is in the aggregate of the impressions you get from someone’s Tweets you follow.

There has been plenty of discussion on blogs about Twitter - all discussing what amounts to the same thing - does this medium have future? Not to be silent on the subject I do think it is a service which will be a place alongside other internet-mediums like blogs and IM. I think it will be in a form evolved from the one we know today - one of the reasons being that many currently heavy users of Twitter in this experimental adoption phase will stop or at least severely par back their usage of the service as they realise its capacity to cause constant distraction, fragmenting their thinking and to generally get in the way of Getting Things Done. I’ll touch more on this in a subsequent post.

Something I haven’t heard much in the current conversations about Twitter and that I think is important is that one of the key strategic strengths of the service is infrastructural - the link between IM and mobile network messaging and the web is a useful one which many applications will build upon. I think one of the players in the industry, whether Twitter or Jaiku or a new player to come (and regardless, likely to be acquired by one of the big companies) will benefit from owning a reliable set of gateways maintaining these links.

The direction the presence products will expand will be in their ability to filter and summarize the content they deliver - experimentation with Twitter and Pipes will be interesting as the service will need to overcome its procrastinatory qualities. With the internet already being the procrastinators achilies heel the last thing we need (and I am assuming I might be representative of at least some of us in this) is a stream of random information flashing on GTalk or our mobile phones constantly to distract us from what we are actually doing.

Where Twitter-like applications could come into their own is if they can combine the users current geo-location, mood or other information to tailor very relevant alerts to them. Currently however its like trying to work with firehose to the side of your face.

Who reigns supreme?

They all rule the net in their own way. Google’s brand is strongest at the moment and most web searches are conducted there. Yahoo gets more visits overall and dominates most verticals outside search. Microsoft in the form of MSN is ever-present and can never be ignored.

Despite Steve Ballmer’s outbursts, I doubt MS are quite as fearful of Google’s sword-waving as everyone makes out. They are busy becoming a mature business, giving investor’s hard-earned back.

There are still interesting times ahead. What happens when Google’s growth slows? It must slow along with internet growth. That leaves only three options for Google:

• More advertisements
• More relevance and algo-tweaks
• Portalisation

The last point is inevitable because as time moves on the ability for the first two points to keep the growth afloat is reduced. The paradox is that to undertake a true diversification of interests part of Google’s appeal might be reduced. Yahoo can consistently drive traffic from its verticals to new or updated properties. Google, in striving to keep its frontpage simple is hampered in this ability.

But they are putting their chips in line.

Hundreds of verticals with quality features (and slowly growing audiences) are being rolled out by Google. We know none of them are vertical leaders yet but with Google’s strong brand we wonder why? I’d wager the lack of both consistent links between the Google properties and a simple entry point into the key properties from google.com’s frontpage hinder it from sharing the Yahoo Network’s ability to hoist its younger properties into the position of vertical leader.

But Google could make some moves to change this. And they could execute fast. Simple APIs and a focus on scalable infrastructure means they could string their tools and content together in 1000’s of natural ways. Consistency would be almost impossible but if the links are contextual then traffic is likely to flow naturally through its properties.

There are plenty of examples of the cross-polination of Google properties to see - Gmail users seem to be a trial set, gaining access to GTalk and GCalendar with very little effort. But if its so easy for them then why haven’t they done more of this? Why dominate search when they could dominate the world?

Limiting the growth of Gmail and Google Analytics showed off some of the company’s qualities; restraint and focus. The net exploded with the realisation that Google don’t dominate everything. But I think most people missed the point (but then isn’t that always the case? Let’s call that wioota’s Law #1 :)). Google’s traffic is about 80% web search, 20% diversity from this core product. With competitors of the magnitude of Yahoo! and Microsoft, any true deviation from their core business represents more risk than risk aversion.

As the search companies are finding out though, search growth is slowing and soon Google will be forced to force the issue on its new verticals and start serving them up on either the results pages or the frontpage. Either move could achieve one or both of two outcomes:

• Increase the polling of the Google verticals.
• Decrease the usage of Google Search.

And none of this guarantees they could better acquire users or monetise them than Yahoo!

But Google have smart people!

Do you think that the other two multi-billion dollar corporations don’t?

The key to knowing what the game is is in knowing how these companies differ. For those who love to watch Google take on the big boys, think of it like a computer game where Yahoo! is the second end-of-level boss and Microsoft up a level again.

I think plenty of analysis on how Yahoo! builds its verticals into category killers could be done. I’d wager their email is the real key to leveraging the userbase. At just over 2% marketshare Gmail has a long way to go in that area.

All three have proven to be able to move boldy so the future is far from written but what is clear is that the market has a long way to go in understanding how these companies compete. The valuations would be vastly different I suspect.