“How is Twitter going to make money?” – This is the question which seems to crop up again and again online. The latest suggestion comes from Todd Chaffee, an Institutional Venture Partners VC and Twitter board member, who suggested that Twitter may let businesses send branded direct messages.

He told the New York Times :

Commerce-based search businesses monetise extremely well, and if someone says, ‘What treadmill should I buy?’ you as the treadmill company want to be there. As people use Twitter to get trusted recommendations from friends and followers on what to buy, e-commerce navigation and payments will certainly play a role in Twitter monetisation.

I’m not sure how this would work but it doesn’t sound like something which I think would prove to be popular and it’s something which I think could be very easily abused. It doesn’t seem like any of this matters anyways as Twitters top man Evan Williams quickly responded to these suggestions :

Todd is not actually on Twitter’s board and, is brainstorming on his own. These are not in the least bit concrete plans of the company.

I found it a little strange that someone at a venture capital company would claim to be on the board of Twitter and no the ins and outs of a new business model. Seems like any mention of the word Twitter nowadays will get you the attention of a lot of news agencies!

Link : Twitter to make cash from branded direct messages

I spoke recently about how useful I find Trending Topics on Twitter. It’s a great place to find out about the latest news.

News is something which Twitter obviously takes seriously, as was illustrated this week with their recent rescheduling around the Iran Election Protest. Which is why is it was no surprise to read yesterday that Twitter are censoring their Twitter Trends area and removing inappropriate search results (spam/sex related).

It’s a good move from their part though if you want to see the true unmodified search results, you can always check the results from a Twitter portal, where the results won’t have been edited.

Twitter yesterday rescheduled downtime around the Iran Election Protest. Something which no doubt surprised a lot of people.

A critical network upgrade must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter. In coordination with Twitter, our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight. However, our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran. Tonight’s planned maintenance has been rescheduled to tomorrow between 2-3p PST (1:30a in Iran).

It just shows how important Twitter has become for reporting news. Clearly Twitter realises this as well or they wouldn’t have rescheduled. Nearly every major worldwide website schedules their downtime during nighttime in the USA as that is where most of their traffic comes from so doing the maintenence in the afternoon was a big surprise to a lot of people.

Link : Down Time Rescheduled