Is Twitter stock worth buying?
I say yes. Perhaps, not to sell overnight, but as a long term investment.
I’ll confess, I am no investment guru. By starting companies, and self funding them, in the case of LexBlog, my investments tend to be one trick ponies.
But I have been a believer in Twitter since day one – at least after I got by the initial, how can a tool that allows someone to share what they had for lunch be worthwhile.
Twitter’s been well managed. Rather than place its funds in building a business model, money was poured into technology. First to keep a site carrying billions of tweets up. Second to build the infrastructure to carry media (pictures, video, and the like) in Tweets.
Twitter is getting beat up by the pundits who tell us Twitter is going to have trouble selling ads like Facebook. I suspect, pundits who are not heavy users of Twitter. Pundits paid to create controversy for news attention.
Twitter’s not Facebook. Ads and sponsorship treatment will be handled differently. Heck, because Twitter invested in infrastructure they’ve yet to arrive at their sweet spot business model for generating revenue. It’ll come.
Twitter is a utility as sure as sure the electricity that runs the power in your office and your home is a utility. Twitter moves information, media, discussion, and debate around the world. Heck, governments run by dictators cannot control speech now that we have Twitter.
How does news and discussion break today? Bin Laden’s death. China earthquake. Boston bombing, and resulting manhunt. Hurricane Sandy happenings. All news that broke or covered via Twitter.
Remember that TV guide on your grandparents coffee table? Or more recently, the on screen guide you see with DirecTV or Comcast? Twitter may well replace how we discover and even view video.
Already Twitter tags guide discussion between TV and social media. Next people you trust sharing what you ought to watch via Twitter will guide your viewing behavior. Heck people may even serve up TV-like media that you’ll view via Twitter.
Twitter’s already moving media across applications such as Rebel Mouse and Flipboard. Media that now comes alive visually with these apps even though it was only a link that was shared. Think media being sucked or pulled through Twitter.
Maybe I am nuts, but I see Twitter as a core utility to media and information sharing in the days ahead. Plumbing for the movement of media and information just as Cisco has served as the plumbing for the net.
Twitter is no Facebook. Twitter is no Google+. That’s okay, they’re all different. There’s room for all of them in the explosion we are seeing in social media. An explosion that is every bit as real as the Internet explosion we have witnessed in just the last 15 years.
And yep, I am betting a thousand or two on Twitter tomorrow.