Will Twitter split in two?

Previously I posted on how twitter can start to make money from its increasingly popular service
 
http://rand-musing.blogspot.com/2010_07_01_archive.html
 
and all those ways still apply but now it seems possible that the best way for twitter to become profitable is to divide itself into two separate businesses.
 
This might seem strange when the history of IT in general and the Internet in particular has been one of endless mergers and acquisitions resulting in gigantic businesses like Microsoft, Google etc but I really think that Twitter may be an exception to this rule and for a number of reasons
 
Twitter is structurally very different from every other Social Media site around and different in its model to every other website that I can think of in that its website is largely irrelevant. If you scan through your own twitter feed you'll find that the vast majority of posts aren't coming from twitter.com they're emerging from iphones, blackberrys, literally dozens of third party applications, APIs from news providers etc etc etc.  In my own (unscientific) stream I would guess that no more than 10% of the content I read on twitter actually originates via twitter.com.
 
Myself, if I'm watching The Apprentice or Xfactor (under protest in the later case I hasten to add) I'll be reading twitter not on my laptop but on my blackberry and will post comments via that device simply because its easier to use and doesn't burn my lap in the process!
 
The key conclusion from this is that Twitter(ing) the service is much much more popular than twitter.com the website and so the two can, and should, be considered separately.
 
If you then start to look at revenue opportunities it becomes clear that some of the existing revenue plans that have emerged within twitter are therefore not likely to produce the expected returns.
 
Promoted trending topics will only be seen by around 10% of twitter users and therefore could be seen are being worth only 10% of what they would based on twitter user numbers  certainly the click-through numbers will be dramatically lower - even less than 10% of expected if the .com site users are the less active portion of the twitter membership.
 
Any site based advertising will therefore be viewed by a smaller and potentially less active sub set of the whole membership making it much less attractive (or lucrative).
 
On the other hand in service revenues could be extremely attractive - either paid for insertions (tricky to square with the audience), or pay per view subscriptions (an area I think has lots of legs).
 
Twitter, the service provider, could also offer its services into closed user groups (either Business to Business or Intra Company) to provide rapid messaging delivery inside a company.  This could provide a very interesting revenue stream and earn cash to fund future developments.
 
Based in this I would expect to see some announcements regarding  Twitter's business structure very soon..
 
Karl Meyer
www.SPICE.co.uk