What were your New Year’s resolutions? Lose some weight, read more? For the creators of Twitter, the goal for this year is turning an obsession into a revenue-generating enterprise. “We need to build a business out of Twitter – that needs to start happening in 2010,” Biz Stone tell the Financial Times.

To reach that goal, Twitter will double its workforce from 100 after doubling it in 2009. The co-founder supplied a rather generalized answer to just how it plans to get serious: “deliver tweets that are interesting and relevant to you that you didn’t know you wanted to see till you saw them”

In December, Twitter ended the year profitable. The San Francisco, Calif.-based company made $25 million from two search deals with Google and Microsoft, according to Bloomberg. For much of last year, onlookers questioned whether Twitter could turn 140-character messages from celebrities and marketers into a viable money-making venture.

Possibly wanting to answer those critics, Stone said “runaway growth forced us to stay simple.”

[Via Financial Times]

It’s that time of year, when prognosticators and pundits dust off the crystal ball to predict the trends for the New Year. In the case of the business of blogging, several interesting trends are in sight for 2010. In no particular order, we start with the banishment of ‘blog.’

Remember when we’d go to the record store to buy music and the book store to find our reading material? The same can be said for ‘blog.’ It started as short-hand for a Web Log, then transmuted into both a noun and a verb umbrella indicating short online writing. However, as more and more people turn online for news and information, those blogs quickly became more than the inane rambling of someone inordinately occupied with lint, to disseminating facts. Couple that with the decline of newspapers and you need a better term to describe the wide range of online material. For that reason, I suggest the following: site. This connects with a similar prediction from our friends at the Inquisitr: five major blogs will be in the top news sites for 2010.

Our second prediction doesn’t require us to climb out onto a shaky tree limb. Instead, building on the first, we see a consolidation between traditional blogging and larger social-media players. We’ve already seen the quick adoption by Automattic of Twitter’s new API, allowing people to update their blogs from 140-character “tweets.” We also saw Google include those Tweets in its search results. The third leg to the stool will be Facebook, leveraging its more than 3 million users to create a more socialize blogging atmosphere.

Lastly, we’re likely to see more sell-offs and acquisitions in the blogging space as the end result of a bruising 2008 and 2009. Yahoo plans to close My Blog Log this month. Yahoo had the bad luck of buying My Blog Log in 2007, about the same time people were rushing to Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. We also saw Jeremy Wright, give up the b5Media CEO slot to Elaine Kunda. Although Wright gave the usual ‘family’ reasons, the Canadian blogging network head saying he was burned out and unhappy. In 2009, b5Media announced a controversial pay change for bloggers. Just prior to Wright’s departure, b5Media’s sales VP reportedly left the company.

The introduction of Kunda also carried its own implications. The Toronto residence was responsible for cost-cutting and preparing companies for a merger. In 2006, b5Media received a reported $2 million in 2008, following its first round of funding around 2006. Investors often wait three to four years, then push for a cash-out or merger.

[Via Inquisitr]

Celebrity news site TMZ Sunday night confirmed it will launch a website focused on sports. TMZ’s Harvey Levin said there is little difference between Hollywood and well-known athletes.

“I don’t really see a difference between a sports star and a celebrity,” Levin told The New York Times. When word of Tiger Woods’ one-car auto accident happened, TMZ’s ears perked-up. “We immediately jumped on that and said we have to dig deeper,” Levin told the paper’s media reporter Brian Stelter.

TMZ became the center of some gossip last week when TMZ ran an ad on sports site DeadSpin promoting its scoops.

The AOL-owned site has seen its annual revenue fall to $12.7 million for the first nine months of 2009. In 2008, TMZ online earned $25.4 million.

[Via NYT]

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is preparing to launch Square, a mobile payment system for small businesses. But can Dorsey do for mobile payments what he’s done for social-networking?

Square, set to launch the first quarter of 2010, markets a hardware dongle for a cell phone’s audio jack. Rather than small companies obtaining an expensive merchant account to process credit card transactions, Square allows shops to “piggyback” on its account. For its trouble, Square will charge a fee from small businesses and a fee from credit card companies.

The service is now in a testing phase with around 300 small businesses in St. Louis, San Francisco and New York.

The similarity between Twitter’s revenue plans is eerie. Square co-founder Jim McKelvey told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch the company is waiting for a signal before setting a course.

“We don’t know where this is going. If done right, the market will tell us what the uses are,” McKelvey said.

Even before it has launched, Square has its critics and competitors. IDC Financial analyst Aaron McPherson called the service “largely just hype.” VeriFone Holdings, a San Jose, Calif. company that already handles the majority of store credit card transactions, plans to launch its cell phone-based PAYware Mobile in January.

[Via SPD]

Mixer Labs, Twitter's first move into location-based tweets.

Twitter’s recent acquisition of Mixer Labs for its GeoAPI location-based technology prompts a number of questions. Will location become the hot subject of 2010? How will the other social-media giant Facebook respond?

Although Twitter is mum on what it paid for Mixer Labs (founded by two former Google employees), the San Francisco company recently said this acquisition was just the first of more to come. “Our efforts in this area have just begun,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone announced.

The San Francisco, Calif. company understands its 140-character service is quickly becoming a platform for news alerts and product marketing. “We want to know what’s happening, and more precisely, where is it happening,” the company blogged.

The acquisition of Mixer Labs allows Twitter’s API to offer software developers the ability to build-in location-based options for applications, such as TweetDeck. “When current location is added to tweets, new and valuable services emerge – everything from breaking news to finding friends or local businesses can be dramatically enhanced,” said Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

Twitter was a major outlet for Iranian voters and the three-year old company gave news as an example how location-based tweets could improve micro-blogging. “Twittering ‘Earthquake!’ alone is not as informative as ‘Earthquake!’ coupled with your current location.

Mixer Labs co-founder and CEO Elad Gil reportedly helped create Google’s mobile unit. The Mountain View, Calif. Internet giant’s move into location was marked by Google Lattitude, a service that maps the location of friends or co-workers. Google also paid Twitter (some say $15 million) for data-sharing.

The Mixer Labs acquisition is the second high-profile buy-out by Twitter. In 2008, the micro-blogging company acquired Summize, its technology improving users’ ability to search individual tweets.

Twitter has an estimated 58 million users, a far cry from Facebook’s more than 350 million. Facebook recently updated its privacy policy to include location-based services.

“Location Information. When you share your location with others or add a location to something you post, we treat that like any other content you post (for example, it is subject to your privacy settings). If we offer a service that supports this type of location sharing we will present you with an opt-in choice of whether you want to participate.”

However, Facebook must move carefully in that direction. “With all of Facebook’s privacy settings this will be a tricky dance for the world’s largest social network,” TechCrunch writes.

[Via CNET, BBC]

Technorati, the blog search engine with an identity crisis, is now set to become a blog. In an e-mail, Technorati said it would unveil its revamped mission in October.

“Beginning in October, Technorati will feature original content on the site written by bloggers just like you! This is an amazing opportunity to give your writing vast exposure, become known as an expert in your field/s of interest, and to join a vibrant writer community,” The Next Web quoted a Technorati note to bloggers. Soon afterwards, Technorati removed a contact page mentioned in the email, according to Tech Blorge.

What might be the reason for the change? Some believe the switch is designed to regain some of the thunder Google stole when it began indexing blogs.

“Search engines lap up original content, and with Google already counting 60,400+ links pointing to the Technorati domain, the site could rank highly for all sorts of fresh content. If Technorati can produce even semi-readable articles, it could see a linear increase in traffic over time,” wrote Mashable.

The question is will Technorati have any better luck than its previous incarnations.

For Twitter users fighting the 140-character limit, URL shorteners were the perfect answer. Instead of a long URL like http://www.problognews.com/google-kill-rss, you could shorten it to http://bit.ly/DKRwM. Now Twitter’s default URL shortener has cloned itself and dropped two characters. Now bit.ly users need only type j.mp.

This is a smart move. “They’ve now eliminated one of potential competitors advantages by offering as short a URL as possible,” write Adam Ostrow of Mashable.

That competition could come from other companies, including Google, looking to put their own brand on the burgeoning market for URL shortening services. In August, Automattic unveiled wp.me, a URL shortener for users of the WordPress.com blog service, for example.

Bit.ly, which has raised $2 million in funding, recently told the New York Times it’s links are clicked on at least 50 million times each week.

New numbers seem to fly in the face of current wisdom. Blogging still beats Twitter in terms of benefit for employees, as well as customers. A survey of 1,700 executives found 43 percent felt blogs provided significant benefit for internal use. An even greater number – 51 percent – of business leaders said blogs benefitted outreach to customers and clients.

Real Simple Syndication (RSS), the technology used to distribute blog posts and other news, was also seen as beneficial to business.

“That’s 24% more than those who see any benefit from microblogging (i.e. Twitter),” wrote Steven Walling of ReadWriteWeb.

In recent months, a number of voices have pronounced RSS virtually dead with Twitter dancing on the grave.

“It’s time to get completely off RSS and switch to Twitter. RSS just doesn’t cut it anymore,” Steve Gillmore wrote in a May 5 piece entitled ‘Rest in Peace, RSS.’ The recent news that former FeedBurner CEO Dick Costolo (now with Google) would join Twitter as COO only seem to confirm that view.

Gillmore and others argue Google Reader helped kill RSS by disconnecting audiences from blogs. Rather than going to blogs and using RSS, you simply entered the website name and the articles appeared in full-text, surrounded by a Google-created atmosphere of ads and targeted links.

[Via ReadWriteWeb, Steve Gillmore and McKinsey]

Dick Costolo, Twitter's New COO. (Photo: PaidContent)

There may be other reasons for the move, such as previous financial ties.

“This is the old gang reuniting,” writes Staci Kramer, co-editor of PaidContent.org. Costolo invested in Twitter in 2007. Union Square Ventures, another Twitter backer, also financially supported Feedburner.

Baker in a post entitled “Twitter is the New RSS”, believes Costolo would provide the tools Twitter needs to offer something akin to Google Analytics for companies tracking the effectiveness of their micro-blogging campaigns.

[Via Search Engine Watch and PaidContent]

In a sign of its growing popularity, StickTwits Tuesday launched StockTwits Desktop. The Adobe Air-based application employs the familiar TweetDeck appearance – which isn’t a coincidence since StockTwits co-founder Howard Lindzon is a TweetDeck investor.

Lindzon told TechCrunch he envisions his new desktop application as a “Social Bloomberg” or the “Facebook of Finance.” Bloomberg Terminals, a mainstay with Wall Street traders, costs $2,000 per month while Facebook is the largest social network with more than 250 million users.

StockTwits allows Twitter users to follow stock-related news by including companies’ ticker symbol ($AAPL, for Apple, for instance). The service has been included in TweetDeck since February 2009. The inclusion followed a $500 million investment by a group including Lindzon. StockTwits Desktop essentially creates a separate application for StockTwits users.

Among the features: creation of specific trading groups. Private messages can be exchanged between group members without being part of the general Twitter traffic. The desktop application also includes a Web browser, allowing people to click on StockTwits links and never exiting the Desktop.

Download StockTwits Desktop.

[Via Mediabistro and TechCrunch]