What's happening to Twitter shows it's growing up

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 | By Will Cooper

Well, okay, it has been a search engine of sorts since its inception. But overnight it changed its call to action from ‘What are you doing?’ to ‘What’s happening?’. Thus, Twitter has shifted its position from being a personal broadcasting tool to a portal for breaking news and information.

Speaking on the Twitter blog, co-founder Biz Stone said the change reflected that Twitter is no longer exclusively a platform for “personal musings”. “Between those cups of coffee, people are witnessing accidents, organising events, sharing links, breaking news, reporting stuff their dad says, and so much more,” he wrote. “The fundamentally open model of Twitter created a new kind of information network and it has long outgrown the concept of personal status updates.”

Of course, Twitter users and the wider industry have recognised this for a long time. The fuss this year over whether Google, Microsoft or Yahoo would buy Twitter is testament to that.

Deals with all three to integrate Twitter results have now been announced, so maybe its founders decided it’s time to openly show that Twitter has grown up.

So it’s no surprise the change was announced on the evening Stone said Twitter would offer commercial tools and services before the end of the year to help brands make money on the platform (nma.co.uk 19 November 2009). Its positional change, therefore, shows it as a professional, commercially minded organisation rather than as a fun start-up.

Until now, Twitter has avoided talking about business models. Now it’s going commercial, so the question is whether this change can deliver on the promise.

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