Twitter on Blackberry. Finally!

Twitter has been making news this week by announcing a shift in their business strategy. During the Twitter developer conference codenamed “Chirp” the company released its future strategies, and a number of features which they will be adding to the site. Among these features are promoted tweets, allowing business to gain exposure by purchasing tweets which will be displayed on various pages on the site. They also unveiled the much hyped geo-tagging feature which allows users to add location to their tweets. Twitter has also decided to jump into the link shortening market. The link shortening service makes a lot of sense for the website because link shortening services are very prevalent in user’s tweets. The site has also announced that it has sold its archived tweets to the Library of Congress so that they may be searchable by Google. Twitter has also landed a deal with Microsoft to use its search engine Bing, to search tweets on the site.

Maybe the most exciting news to come out of the conference was the news that Twitter would develop its own mobile apps to run on different mobile devices. To date there are many third party apps that can be used to connect to Twitter, but with the number of Twitter apps developed by 3rd parties users are confused on exactly which Twitter app to use.

The news of the companies shift in strategy has not been without critics. Both customers and developers have concerns regarding the website’s change in strategy. Users do not want the site to change and believe the move to include promoted tweets will make the site more commercial and lose its appeal. Twitter has countered this claim by stating that users will only see promoted links that are targeted to their searches, much like Google’s method for advertising. Developers of link shortening services are concerned that the announcement of Twitter’s in house link shortening service will effectively put them out of business. The link shortening niche sprung up because of Twitter’s 140 character limit in its Tweets. Twitter claims that the overhead for these types of businesses are very small to begin with and that to use this service requires a Twitter user to sign-up with a third party service. In attempts to make their users experience a better one. They are basically replacing the middle man in the link shortening service.

Some users are excited by the announcement by Twitter to add both the enhanced geo-tagging feature and the development of its own mobile apps. Users have been asking for these features for quite some time. The fact that Twitter is giving users what they want shows commitment to their users and the website should be commended for this fact.

Their shift in business strategy is a wise one. Twitter is already a place being used by others for business purposes. They do have measures to stop users from participating in activities that disturb others, but it is impossible to get rid of all of the spam on Twitter. Twitter has recognized this and decided to get in on it, a wise move for Twitter in my opinion.

There was a lot of exciting news that came out of the Chirp conference. We will have to wait to see how it affects the everyday user on Twitter. I suspect the normal user will not see much change in their Twitter experience by the recent announcements.

Exerpt from Twitter Chirp conference.