It has been a lot of buzz about Twitter even though their traffic is not really that impressive right now – http://quantcast.com/twitter.com – many believe it to be the next big web hit. I am still skeptical about the success for Twitter even though the concept is incredible simple.
Twitter has until now been a very US centric site, which also makes sense from a monetization point of view as that is where the advertising dollars exist. The SMS replies can in the US be sent via SMTP, but that is very US specific. The confirmation replies and the group SMS will then be very cheap. If you get enough traffic, you should be able to monetize even with a very low CPM combined with the likely very low cost structure of Twitter, but will the technology behind it scale enough with the users? I don’t know. We will know as time progresses. They really do everything right by trying as it is the only way to get the answer.
Nevertheless, I am leaning to believe it would be easier such as the case with YouTube to harness the potential power inside something else as a tool or service. For instance it will perfectly into the scope of poking in Facebook and profile commenting in MySpace. I do see why people love the concept. However I do think the main power of Twitter is not in the US but in the huge markets in Asia such as India, China and Japan where texting is major factor.
