There’s a meeting at Twitter headquarters this afternoon, and all the cool kids (see: us) are going to be there, but Twitter hasn’t told us why. There are a number of features we’ve been expecting and a few more that we’ve been hoping for, so we thought we’d take a quick look at some of those this morning and see if any of our wishes come true.
1) Analytics
Of course, a big thing we’re looking at is how Twitter is going to continue on its road to monetizing its product and one big avenue for that is an analytics offering. We’ve
the launch of Twitter’s own, home-grown version of a
and with Twitter’s own URL shortener
, what better time is there than now?
As Alistair Croll, a writer for O’Reilly, noted this week, Twitter’s URL shortener is a game changer for its tracking capabilities.
2) Premium Business Accounts
Another way to bring in the bucks is to start a business offering, something that would come natural for Twitter, the company that is decidedly
. Maybe these accounts could offer verified accounts to more businesses, to help clear up things like BP’s recent fun with its
, or a package of
. A full business package could include advanced analytics, engagement statistics and even multi-user functionality.
Hmm. Sounds social-media-licious.
3) Reputation Tracking
Technophiles (and bloggers such as myself) are always talking about “game mechanics” with location-based services and games like
and
– you know, to keep people interested – but what about the sorely lacking Twitter egos out there?
Already, there are a number of services out there that tell you what type of Twitter user and how influential (or not) you are, but that hasn’t stopped Twitter before, right? The company has moved into retweets and URL shortening, so maybe another form of analytics is next…but we sort of doubt it as a stand-alone.
What about pure reputation stroking and getting some badges in there? Who share’s the most news? You do, that’s who.
A Few Others…
Surely, there are a number of other things on our wish-list. Perhaps Twitter will complete the surge into real-time and get rid of API limits. What about self-service promoted tweets, making it even easier for the little guy (a la much of what Facebook has done with its advertising) to get his word out there? Personally, we’d really love to see a
that lets users know when they’ve reached the next level of social media nirvana. Then again, maybe the big Twitter.com redesign has been in the works all this time and we’ve all been none the wiser.
We’re not exactly sure, but one way or another, we’ll know by this afternoon, so come back around 4 p.m. PT and we’ll have the story. In the meantime, we can speculate and so can you – what do you think? What’s up Twitter’s sleeve?
