A service that has been used by internet “geeks” for months and months is starting to catch on to mainstream big time. Internet messaging service “Twitter”, a mix between Email, a Blog and Facebook is catching fire in the mainstream media, mainly because of the extensive use that was made during Barack Obama’s recent speach. While he was speaking, other members of the government were “Twittering”. What does that mean?

Twitter is a service similar to the status feature on Facebook where users can write what they are up to, their latest thoughts, etc. Each post can have a maximum of 140 characters. Through the web or mobile gadgets, users can “follow” their friends, families, etc. It is of course kind of ironic that the mainstream media is talking about Twitter so much all of the sudden when even a few months ago, Barack Obama himself was using the service to communicate with supporters throughout the country.

In any case, there is no doubt that Twitter is quickly catching on to main street America and is probably seeing a major surge in its users numbers. And it is probably a good thing that it took a little time for everyone to catch up because for many months, the service was very unreliable with the network going down quite often leaving Twitter users very frustrated about their inability to connect with their friends.

The interesting part of course is that for months now there has been speculation about 2 major points about Twitter:

1-How much is it worth?
2-How can it actually generate a profit?

Two very basic questions and the second one especially is certainly one that most businesses worry about PRIOR to launching a business. But the internet is a different world and while this is not 1999 again, there are still many different websites or services that do not worry about profitability until later stages when they need further funding. Twitter has received $55 millions so far and will probably not even a solid business plan to get further funding because of the recent attention it has received.

There has been speculation for months now and even contests about ways that Twitter could make a few $$$, but there is no clear solution given the way the service is built. Even Facebook, has yet to resolve the mystery and given the way Facebook is built, there a lot more possibilities to make profits from the social network.

But that is not stopping anyone. In fact, there has been a lot of speculation about possible acquirers of Twitter and apparently Facebook has been one of the major prospective buyers…!

It’s too bad that there are no easy ways for regular investors to get in to the game of Venture Capital and invest in such projects because I for one believe that some of these will turn up to be great investments.. maybe that could be a potential new internet project, a community venture capital fund?

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