The world may be buzzing about Twitter, but will the San Francisco-based messaging service with the high cool factor ever be a money maker? Or will it operate at a perpetual loss, as one Wall Street analyst suggested, "until the next cool Web 2.0 social networking concept comes along and Twitter tweets no more."
Peering into the future of a web startup -- Twitter is just three years old -- is always a risky affair. Indeed, Wharton faculty who pay close attention to the nexus of technology and business see a range of possibilities -- most of which involve a sale of the company followed by its integration into a more diversified Internet service such as Yahoo or Google.
For now, though, most believe Twitter is wise to build up its user base, which is already happening. The free service, which allows its users to send messages of up to 140 characters, is the Internet's fastest growing social networking site, according to media-market research firm Nielsen. Unique visitors to Twitter's web site skyrocketed from 475,000 unique users in February 2008 to more than 7 million in February 2009. And those statistics don't count people using the service on their mobile phones.
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