Today, Twitter made its debut on the NYSE. Critics point to a lack in revenue or profit in the young company. But many of these people in my estimation lack any insight into the real tech market and why Twitter is such a power house not just as a tech company but in terms of true value.
When people like Oprah Winfried and Ashton Kutcher adopted Twitter, it pretty much sealed Twitter’s fate as a pop culture revolutionary communication device, similar to the TV, the phone, the internet, YouTube, Google, etc. The fact that numerous celebrities now have embraced Twitter and that there was a feature that allowed these celebrities to mark themselves as “verified” actually was a reification of Twitter as such a monster player in technology.
Most people see Twitter as a bridge between celebrities to their followers. But it’s even way more important than that. Another prime example of where Twitter made a huge impact was during 3/11 or during Japan’s typhoon/earthquake disaster back in 2011. Twitter demonstrated that it could deliver critical updates to the world and locals when other forms of media could no longer be considered reliable. Here, we see one powerful example of how this platform could act beyond a mini blog to a global service.
Twitter has also bridged the gap across the world. I mentioned that it acts as a potential global service where people in potentially oppressed countries can communicate their woes. Twitter has effectively lowered the barriers of entry between people by giving a public forum to everyone. It’s potentially free journalism at its best at this moment.
But the real value aren’t these aspects alone. It’s the sheer data that’s collected on a constant basis. As the digital age grows more omnipotent, companies that are able to collect massive amounts of data are those which will dominate these digital markets. People only think of monetary currency as the only mechanisms of exchange. But we’re quickly approaching a new age in terms of value.
Open source, tweets, hashtags, likes, Google +1s, check ins, page views, searches, etc. are all forms of this new currency. This currency acts as the public interests which is far more valuable than monetary currency like the stock market or even printed money and gold. They are valuable because they represent sentiment of society. They demonstrate the things that motivate people and interests us. These trends help shape the way the world works and that’s far more important than flat out dollars.
The thing is that money itself is just becoming archaic. It is too skewed at this point where these certain elite groups have managed to artificially conflate or deflate things around us. But some of those things are inflated too much (e.g. how much a basketball star makes) vs things which don’t get enough money (good teachers). However, these new currencies as I’m describing them eventually will pool into true value over time that can be quantified.
In the case of Twitter, someone once described the company as the “pulse of the internet.” That’s a monstrously powerful description that hits the nail on the head of what Twitter represents at this stage to people. You can dig up these trends from Twitter but they have so much of this data that they become a sort of one-stop-shop for trending data. Political campaigns, as an example, can be planned completely around data mining Twitter (or other sources). And the thing is when you describe an entity in terms of a heart or a mine, you’re essentially defining it as being absolutely essential to the survival of other organs or having immense wealth.
So Twitter’s true value isn’t about how many ads they can get people to click on. Their real value will be the partnerships and the fact that their sitting on a universe of data from all types of sources, some of the most important ones that attract everyone from a lowly bum all the way up to government agencies. That’s a pretty tall order. So don’t worry about revenue when it comes to Twitter’s true value. Besides, if you found this article, you probably discovered it through Twitter or one of these currency exchanges.
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