ExecTweets

Skype–the Twitter of Yesteryear–Hypes Web Telephone on Television (Plus: Biz Talks Biz!)

Kara Swisher in News on March 25, 2009 at 3:03 pm PT

SiliconANGLE blogger John Furrier found a supersweet television ad that eBay Internet phone unit Skype is running to goose its brand. The once-hottest-ever start-up–touted up and down Silicon Valley for its explosive growth back in 2003–is still a major global brand with a massive 405 million user accounts at the end of 2008. In fact, Skype’s size makes media-overhyped Twitter seem, well, twee, by comparison. Twitter had only 9.8 million unique visitors in February, up impressively from 6.1 million in January. But the hot-or-not comparisons between the two are interesting to think about.

Looky Here! Actual Revenue for Twitter, Courtesy of Microsoft.

Peter Kafka in Media on March 23, 2009 at 12:41 pm PT

Finally. Here comes Twitter’s first real foray into advertising, courtesy of Microsoft’s marketing budget. And don’t worry, Twitter users: You won’t be getting come-ons for Vista in your Twitterstream. Not yet, at least. The program that Twitter has rolled out today–something called ExecTweets–is a fairly cautious step into marketing, and that is certainly by design. But it does give a you a good sense of what Twitter thinks it can do with its buzzy, fast-growing and almost revenue-free product.