Twitter’s Magical Media Tour

Over the past couple of weeks, it has been interesting to see media coverage of interviews done with Twitter co-founder Evan Williams and Biz Stone. As someone who spent a lot of time as a reporter, I’m curious from a media relations point of view why both executives are suddenly so engaged and active with the media, particularly the mainstream media. (An example is this story on Portfolio.com)

It’s not like Williams, Stone or, for that matter, Twitter need the exposure. Twitter continues to see huge growth, and has clearly established itself as the leading microblogging service.

So, the question is: why are the media interviews? Is this part of getting Twitter more exposure in markets outside the U.S.? Is it part of the latest financing round? Or do Williams and Stone just want get out of the office?

While Williams and Stone spend time doing the media rounds, the reality is Twitter still faces major challenges in transforming itself from a red-hot platform into a viable business that generates revenue.

At the same time, I believe Twitter also needs to evolve from being a platform that offers a few basic services such as writing and reading posts. The risk is if Twitter keeps on being “vanilla icre cream”, the Twitter ecosystem will continue to use the platform to launch all kinds of new “flavors” that could generate lot of revenue in which Twitter won’t get a cut of the action.

In the interview, Williams dismissed the idea of advertising on Twitter even though I think it makes a lot of sense and would be accepted by most Twitter users if done properly.

Williams suggests there are “interesting models”, including “corporate users”, who are using it to “sell goods or take advantage of the real-time aspect of the site. There are all kinds of goods and services that have a scarcity component, and people want the information as soon as possible, so they opt in to receive updates through Twitter.”

I wonder what this business model involves, and how it fits into what companies such as Dell are doing now through Twitter activity such as sales alerts. Will Twitter create a premium “sales alert” feature, for example, or perhaps set up an Amazon-like affilaite program that involve links on Twitter that use a Twitter-generated URL?

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