It has come to our attention that after a few years of building up a generous portfolio of users Twitter is actively brainstorming monetization methods of their social marketing platform which might be implemented very shortly. I mean it was bound to happen sooner or later. With this much use and attention how has it been so difficult for Twitter to make some money.

Twitter has realized just how important their little social marketing and micro blogging tool has become to many growing businesses. Maybe they have decided to finally make some money off the people that are making money on their platform. It ironic that their users are making a profit and growing businesses and organizations on Twitter but Twitter itself does not yet have a solid business plan on how it will make money. I’m glad to see the people at Twitter are starting to spin their wheels and figure out how to navigate from the red over to the riches of the green.

This is a great step but much more will be needed to become a cash generating monster. How long will investors keep coughing up bags of dough to keep their servers chugging? How would they figure out costs for commercial accounts? Also how about the thousands of consultants that leave cheeky responses and trickle in bits of self promotion here and there? How do you charge them? Do you only charge to the big guys? This is great step for Twitter but i’m sure there are loads of revisions that will take place before this makes it live.

Recently young Scottish entrepreneur, Scott Campbell has launched his own regionally targeted social marketing and networking website called ScotBlog.net.

ScotBlog focuses greatly on anything and anyone Scottish. If you are from Scotland and have been raised with a Scottish background ScotBlog will be a great website to network on. Now we all know that social networking websites are nothing new but the fact that this has been conjured up by a 13 year old entrepreneur is enough to get me to stop by the website and take a look. I see social networking sites pop up at every corner but when you are this young and have a passion for online marketing and networking than your website really has no where to go but up. At first glance ScotBlog’s appearance is nothing to write home about. Doesn’t exactly have that web 2.0 and social marketing feel just yet but I have a feeling this will change as time goes on. I highly doubt it will be pulling away any visitors from some of its competitors but it is definitely worth checking out. Scott has been making his rounds of recent blog posts across the internet. Don’t be surprised if continue to see his face arounf town.

So here we have another social platform that is all the hype at the water cooler. You visit Twitter you see no ads, no intricate graphics, and a very easy to navigate platform. What you do see is lots of people telling their toes are itchy and they just ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

How has offering this information allowed this website to spread like wildfire? People are curious to what other people are doing and it is evident that this need is growing. I like twitter, I never generate a real conversations but when I look at my Google analytic’s account I notice that my messages do not go unnoticed. is it important for you, as a business owner, to be on Twitter? I think any social platform that has that much traffic and interaction deserves a few chances. Connect to some of your competitors and see how their strategy helps them or what their approach is in communicating people. Some companies set up a feed from their blog and some blast out promotions all day. Twitter is very powerful and can work but it is a trial and error on how it will successfully work for your business. One companies approach is not necessarily the right approach for you so it is important to try different things. Many large successful companies are using Twitter everyday to further grow their organization. Companies like Comcast even use it to take care of customer service related issue. Twitter is the new water cooler now and you don’t even have to get up to start gossiping.

Social blogging has stepped up a level with political blogging. As if you don’t get enough in the news and everywhere else online, Twitter has now gone political with Election Site Highlights from both the Presidential nominees and their running mates.

The site features Tweets involving the presidential and vice presidential candidates and apparently there are hundreds of these Tweets coming through at any one time. The Tweets are derived more from the general public than from any of the politicians. It does however provide for an interesting view on what people are really concerned with in this election.

I am sure the marketing and policy gurus from both sides will be monitoring the flow of information very carefully in case anything damaging hits the airwaves. Can you images how viral a juicy tidbit dropped into the Tweets could become?

You can be sure that somewhere along the line some smart marketing person will find a way to market their site using these Tweets. How successful it will be, who knows. But they will try. It’s human nature. If you a political animal and want to see what all the fuss is about then pop over and have a look – everyone’s Tweeting about something.

Twitter’ recent decision to add the ‘nofollow’ tag to bio’s has met with a lot of discussion. Most of it has centered around Matt Cutts role in the whole affair. Perhaps a full disclosure from Twitter on why they made the change could help clear the air.

The decision itself has two sides. Matt Cutts in his response to the criticism of his involvement does make at least one valid point, that of spamming. It has become the curse of the 21st century and the only real way to defeat it is to remove the incentive. If people feel they can get valuable link juice from sites such as Twitter, they will milk them for all they are worth. Remove the link juice, and the incentive is gone.

Blogs that add the dofollow tag to their comments notice a jump in the number of spam comments fairly quickly. Add the nofollow tag and that spam drops off. It is a catch 22 for most individuals and effects the blog as much as it does the commentor.

Should Twitter reverse their nofollow tags on the bio’s. From one perspective, the answer could be no. Why encourage spam. If a decent spam filtering system could be incorporated, or perhaps removing the ability to link in that section of bio and including a dedicated link section, with a limit of two or three links, then this may prove to be a good meet-in-middle option.

Whether or not Matt Cutts played a big role in the decision is not really relevant. In fact, Matt states in his reply:

By the way, I totally support if Evan (Twitter co-founder) wanted to lift nofollow for real users in some way,…..

Perhaps with a bit of time and space, sensible heads will rule. Twitter will find a way to filter spam and remove the contentious nofollow tag. For now I can accept their decision, if it is truly is spam based, as I want to see spam reduced as much as possible and if Twitter works to find alternatives.