Just as Twitter finally prepares to announce its plans to make money–after what has seemed an eternity–the man responsible for the invention of paid search is beating the microblogging site to the potentially profitable punch, and without its involvement.

Armed with $3.5 million in venture funding from a group of leading investors, well-known entrepreneur Bill Gross is launching a public beta of TweetUp, a keyword-based bidding marketplace akin to Overture/Goto.com, the first paid search system he created a decade ago.

Gross will be the CEO of TweetUp, which will also offer an organic search service to surface the best tweets, a move that seems to put it in competition with Twitter’s own search service.

This comes just as Twitter is aggressively moving to take over key parts of its ecosystem, which has largely been left to third-party developers.

TweetUp could now give these developers a chance to make money on Twitter without relying on Twitter.

TweetUp is backed by Index Ventures, betaworks, Revolution LLC, First Round Capital and other investors, including Mahalo’s Jason Calacanis and BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis.

And TweetUp has struck a number of distribution deals with well-known Twitter search clients and Web sites–such as Seesmic, Answers.com and others–and will pay them half its revenue.

Gross has been working on the service since February at his Idealab start-up incubator in Pasadena, Calif.

He said he got the idea after he was struck by how hard it was to sort through good tweets from the TED conference, as well as how quickly a substantive tweet he posted, which was related to the global climate change event, disappeared as more recent ones replaced it in real time.

Said TweetUp in a press release about its system:

“In addition to an algorithm that combines a variety of factors to determine relevance, tweeters can bid on keywords in a competitive marketplace very similar to what now occurs at Internet search engines. This sophisticated combination of factors pushes the best tweets to the top of the results of users’ searches, allowing them to find the most compelling tweeters, and it enables serious tweeters to expand their following quickly and cost-effectively. TweetUp search will work alongside Twitter’s traditional search to provide a richer array of results.”

Twitter is also making several moves to monetize itself of late, with most observers expecting an advertising system to be announced soon.

The company has also been adding tools, which puts it in direct conflict with outside developers. On Friday, for example, Twitter announced it was purchasing Tweetie, maker of a popular Apple (AAPL) iPhone client for the messaging service.

The start-up has traditionally relied on third-party developers to build apps for the service, much as Facebook did at its start.

But Twitter management and key investors have recently been signaling that the company would be taking over key aspects of its business. This has caused tensions, obviously, in the wider Twitter ecosystem.

Thus, it will be interesting to watch how Twitter reacts to what Gross is doing with TweetUp.

(BoomTown also did an exclusive video with Gross about it all, which is posted here, as well as a tour of Idealab.)

Here are a few screenshots of TweetUp (click on images to make larger):

TweetUp Client

Answers.com

Business Insider

Business Insider Search #1

Business Insider Search #2

And here’s the official press release from TweetUp:

TweetUp Establishes Twitter Marketplace Where the Best Tweeters Rise to the Top

Unique Combination of a Relevance Algorithm and Bidding System Increases Number of Followers and Improves the Quality of Twitter Searches

PASADENA, CA–APRIL 12, 2010–TweetUp, Inc., announced today a new Twitter marketplace designed to showcase the world’s best tweeters and enable them to grow a highly targeted following. TweetUp is a new patent-pending platform that combines the popularity, relevance and influence of tweets and tweeters with a bid-based marketplace. Major partners, including leading Twitter search clients and top web sites, will display the results, enabling users to easily find the best tweets and tweeters in the world.

TweetUp was founded by Bill Gross at Idealab, where he also devised the first model for paid internet search, Overture/Goto.com, over a decade ago. TweetUp is backed by Index Ventures (investor in Skype, last.fm, Myheritage and Playfish), betaworks (investor in Twitter, TweetDeck, Bit.ly), Revolution LLC (founded by Steve Case, investor in Zipcar, LivingSocial, Everyday Health), First Round Capital (investor in Mint.com, StumbleUpon, CoTweet), Jason Calacanis (founder of Mahalo) and Jeff Jarvis (founder of BuzzMachine).

“Twitter has such tremendous potential as a real-time information network far beyond what has been realized to date,” said Bill Gross, Founder and CEO of TweetUp. “For most people, though, 80% or more of the tweets that fly by them when they’re searching for something are useless noise. For serious tweeters, the task of attracting interested and relevant followers is equally daunting. TweetUp will change all of that.”

TweetUp has addressed the needs of both users and tweeters in a single search mechanism. In addition to an algorithm that combines a variety of factors to determine relevance, tweeters can bid on keywords in a competitive marketplace very similar to what now occurs at Internet search engines. This sophisticated combination of factors pushes the best tweets to the top of the results of users’ searches, allowing them to find the most compelling tweeters, and it enables serious tweeters to expand their following quickly and cost-effectively. TweetUp search will work alongside Twitter’s traditional search to provide a richer array of results.

Danny Rimer, a partner with Index Ventures, TweetUp’s lead investor, said, “TweetUp is an opportunity to bring real-time information to the entire Web, and to do it in a way that creates value for everyone concerned. We feel that TweetUp can dramatically improve both the utility and ubiquity of Twitter, and in doing so build a monetization mechanism for real-time search that rivals that of traditional Internet search.”

TweetUp’s search results will be available to hundreds of millions of individuals through revenue-sharing distribution agreements with leading Twitter clients, including one of the leading multi-platform clients, Seesmic, one of the leading Android clients, Twidroid, the leading source of tweets, TwitterFeed, and the leading social media authority and influence ranking system, Klout, as well as popular web sites including BusinessInsider.com, Answers.com, and PopURLs.

Together, these clients and web sites will bring TweetUp search results to more than 40 million unique users per month and serve more than half a billion impressions per month.

“Increasingly, people looking for answers want more than just black and white facts, but also real-time insights relating to the issues surrounding their questions,” said
Bob Rosenschein, Answers.com CEO. “We are at the forefront of meeting that demand, and partnering with TweetUp is an exciting new way to add value to the
Answers.com user community.”

“I have been sharing in social networks and blogs for ten years and realized the power of having a true community,” said Loic Le Meur, CEO of Seesmic. “This is why
I was immediately attracted to working with Tweetup. People who are serious about sharing and having a community around themselves are also often those who have the most interesting ideas to contribute.”

“We believe that the impact of the real-time web, and of Twitter in particular, has only just begun,” explains John Borthwick of betaworks, a major investor in TweetUp, as well as in TweetDeck and Bit.ly. “Because TweetUp will be accessed on mainstream websites across the world, Twitter will be introduced to hundreds of millions of new people. Furthermore, these new users will experience thoughtful tweets, in context, targeted to them according to their areas of interest, and delivered from serious tweeters who care about building a passionate audience.”

“When we created AOL 25 years ago, we believed in the power of community and built a significant company around it,” said Steve Case, AOL co-founder and founder
of Revolution LLC. “Twitter is proving the power of community continues to thrive, and I am excited to be backing Bill Gross and TweetUp as they innovate in the social
media space by making Twitter more useful to a mainstream audience.”

With today’s announcement, TweetUp launches a public beta period in which tweeters can open an account and begin adding search keywords to their profile. For the first 1000 who sign up, the company is providing a $100 in credits to allow tweeters to see how TweetUp’s network can improve their standing in search resultsand attract more followers.

Twitter says that Tweetie, which sells for $2.99 in Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes store, will be renamed Twitter for iPhone and distributed free in the coming weeks. An iPad app is in the works, the company says.

The purchase is going to give Twitter Kremlinologists another reason to pore over Wednesday’s blog post from Twitter investor and board member Fred Wilson, for clues about the company’s next move.

Wilson’s much discussed post argues in part that Twitter, which has traditionally relied on third-party developers to build cool stuff for the service, should be building that stuff itself. Or buying the companies that do.

Wilson specifically cited Tweetie as one of the companies that is “filling holes in the Twitter product.”  Twitter purchased Summize, another company Wilson lumped in that category, in 2008.

Wilson also described TwitPic, a Twitter-centric photo service, as a hole-filler. So if you connect the dots, you might conclude that Twitter intends to buy TwitPic or create its own photo uploader.

Another theory that isn’t mutually exclusive: Now that Twitter owns a client for the iPhone and has officially endorsed a client for Research in Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry, it will look to establish a beachhead with other mobile platforms. The most obvious would be Google’s (GOOG) Android.

All that said, I’m not totally convinced that Wilson meant to use his post as a buy/build roadmap. To me, it reads a bit like someone trying to win a debate–perhaps with Twitter’s founders–about the best way to run the company going forward. And I have a feeling we’ll be coming back to this idea over the next few days.

That’s because we have a new computing platform, the modern hand-held computer, which is also attracting new software and new functions in droves.

The leader in this phenomenon has been Apple’s iPhone, though I expect that this year a few competitors will also begin to attract loads of apps, or widgets. These are small software programs, easily downloaded and purchased, that often connect to the Internet to perform a specific function.

We’ve seen this before, on a smaller scale, with third-party software for the original Palm (PALM) platform, for Windows Mobile, and, to a limited extent, for the BlackBerry. But these new apps can be far more sophisticated, and they are appearing at a much faster rate.

iPhone’s App Store logo

To give you an idea of the scale of this phenomenon, in just the nine months since Apple (AAPL) opened the iPhone App Store, around 25,000 apps have been published for the iPhone and its close cousin, the iPod Touch. And there have been 800 million downloads of these apps, according to Apple. That’s impressive.

So, this week, I thought I’d present minireviews of some of the apps I find myself using most often, in no particular order. You may have an entirely different list of favorites. I am not saying these are the best apps on the iPhone, only that they do their jobs and make the device much more useful for me. All can be found in the app store, by searching on their names.

Tweetie ($2.99): There are many apps for using Twitter, but I use this one. It not only does a great job of showing me the social network’s short, but numerous, postings, but also makes it easy to track topic trends, to post my own entries, and to conduct and save searches.

Facebook (free): This official iPhone app from Facebook covers the core functions of the full Web site. It allows you to view and upload status messages and photos, to check in on your friends, to manage friend requests, and to handle the service’s internal email and chats.

Kindle (free): This is Amazon’s iPhone software version of its $359 Kindle e-book reader. It lacks some of the fancier features of its hardware counterpart, like the ability to create notes or to look up words. But it gives you rapid access to any Kindle e-books you’ve bought, helps you buy new ones and makes the e-books easy to read on the iPhone. It can be used without a hardware Kindle, but if you have both, Amazon (AMZN) will synchronize the two devices so each knows the exact spot where you left off reading on the other.

ICE (99 cents): This app, whose name stands for In Case of Emergency, puts a big Red Cross-style icon on your iPhone’s screen. When the icon is tapped, the app displays your name and contact information; the names and info for your doctors or other emergency contacts; and lists of your medical conditions, allergies and the medications you take. I keep it on my iPhone’s home screen.

Easy Wi-Fi ($2.99): If you hate typing in all the log-in information for the commercial Wi-Fi hot spots to which you subscribe, this app is for you. It automates the process so you have to press only one button. For each of the networks you use, you have to type in your log-in info only once. After that, Easy Wi-Fi will do it for you.

ReaddleDocs ($9.99): A number of iPhone apps allow you to synchronize files with a PC or Mac, but ReaddleDocs stands out. It has too many features to list here, but my favorite is that you can simply send an email with an attached file to a special email address Readdle provides and, very shortly, that file will appear on your iPhone. There, it can be stored and read (though not edited). You can organize your files in folders, and even send them to others. The app works with Microsoft Office files, PDF files and more.

Quordy ($2.99): There are thousands of games for the iPhone and Touch, but Quordy is the one I turn to most often. Much as in Boggle, it requires you to form as many words as possible from a random screen of letters in a set time period. You can challenge others, either nearby or over the Internet, to play the same game board you did and compare results. Or you can just play solo.

Google Mobile (free): Sure, the iPhone has a fine Web browser with a built-in Google search box, but this app makes searching in Google (GOOG) even easier, with instant search suggestions, searches based on your location, and even the ability to enter search terms by speaking them rather than typing them, though I find the voice feature unreliable.

If you own an iPhone or iPod Touch, the App Store is what makes your device worth its price. It’s the software, not the hardware, that makes these gadgets compelling.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090325/some-favorite-apps-that-make-iphone-worth-the-price/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081202/birds-of-a-feather-twitter-together/ http://allthingsd.com/20081202/birds-of-a-feather-twitter-together/#comments Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:20:02 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/20081202/birds-of-a-feather-twitter-together/ If you’ve heard of Twitter but don’t exactly know what it is or how it works, you’re in good company. In the past two months a bunch of my friends, ranging in age from early 20s to late 30s, have asked me about Twitter — or Tweeter, as one person accidentally called it.

To clear things up, I’ve put together a basic Twitter guide that explains how to use it, Twitter lingo, privacy options, mobile applications that can be used with the service and problems that it has. Let’s get started.

Twitter limits social-networking updates to 140 characters or less. The service is surprisingly useful, but leaves room for improvement.

What is it? In short, Twitter is a free social-networking tool that keeps people connected with one another and with sources of information. Twitter users submit updates about whatever they’re currently doing, and these updates cannot exceed 140 text-based characters.

Lingo: Twitter is the name of the service. The term twittering describes the activity of updating a Twitter account. A tweet is an individual Twitter update. Twitterers are people who use the service.

Followers, not Friends: Social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace use the term “friend” to refer to people who are connected with one another, but Twitterers can simply follow one another’s messages by finding a person’s username and selecting a “Follow” option. This alerts the person that you’re following them, and they can reciprocally choose to follow you, or not.

Why use it? While some people primarily use Twitter to post updates about their activities or comments on the news, I use the service more as a follower, allowing me to see quick snippets of news as it occurs. Most tweets are written by real people, while others, such as updates from news organizations that you’ve selected, are automatically generated. Many tweets include the addresses of Web sites with relevant articles that tell readers more on a topic.

Where is it? Twitter works on your Web browser at Twitter.com, where user updates appear in a simple list form as they are submitted. After you’ve signed up and started following other people, those people’s updates, or tweets, will appear when you log onto Twitter.com using a username and password.

Twitter also works on mobile phones, where the 140-character limit allows messages to be sent and received via SMS text messaging. Tweets can also be sent and received via email. Users with smartphones like BlackBerrys or iPhones can use one of the many popular mobile applications for accessing Twitter, which offer much richer options than simple SMS does; I’ll get into these later.

Privacy: Unlike other social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter isn’t focused on holding and sharing personal information about its members. Indeed, the service operates with a majority (80%, according to the company) of users opting to keep their updates public, that is, follow-able by anyone, without permission. This openness encourages people to follow one another or to see who others are already following, and then follow the same people.

However, users can opt to protect their updates, meaning they must grant permission for others to follow them. If you’d like to sign up for Twitter, but aren’t comfortable putting your first and/or last name on the site, you don’t have to; instead, just tell others your username.

Twitter Page Personalization: Each user has a Twitter page showing all of his or her updates, or tweets. (Mine is twitter.com/kabster728, and you can follow me.) This page also shows the number of people a user follows, how many people follow her and how many total updates she has posted.

Twitterers can customize their Twitter page by uploading a photo to be used as the background. The icon representing each user can also be personalized, and this is important because it appears beside that person’s tweets on Twitter.com, where followers recognize and appreciate its familiarity. Some people, including me, use pictures of themselves as their icons, while others use random shots.

Apps/Clients: Twitter works on any browser, and will also work on a mobile browser. If you have a mobile device like the BlackBerry or iPhone, you can jazz up the experience by downloading a third-party app like TwitterFon, TwitterBerry, Tweetie or Twitteriffic. Twittervision, another mobile app, plots points on maps to show where tweets originated. Desktop clients also abound, including Twhirl and TweetDeck. Twitterfeed will set your blog to automatically post content to Twitter.

@Replies, Direct Messages: Each tweet that appears in your Twitter feed can be replied to using a shortcut arrow that appears beside the tweet, and these responses to tweets are called @Replies. So if JoeSchmo tweets to say he saw the new James Bond movie and hated it, you can reply to this with a tweet of your own that says, “@JoeSchmo I still adore Daniel Craig.” These @Replies appear for everyone to see, and must start with @ plus the username of whomever you’re responding to.

Direct Messages differ from @Replies because they can be sent only between people who are following one another. These messages aren’t posted publicly. They appear on your Twitter.com page in a right-side section labeled Direct Messages and will also be sent to your mobile device if you have one registered with Twitter.

Favorites: If you read a tweet that you really like, you can save it as a favorite by selecting a small star beside the tweet, thus adding it to a Favorites section on your homepage. Anyone can see anyone else’s Favorites, regardless of whether or not they’re following one another.

Problems: Twitter’s bare-bones approach gets to the point quickly, displaying tweets in a simple, quick-read format. But the site is lacking in many areas. It used to enable searching for people on Twitter, but that capability is currently down. Now, to search for friends on Twitter, you must upload your email contacts from a Web-based mail service. The company says it plans to have people-search working again by the end of the year. Meanwhile, search.twitter.com enables keyword or location searches.

Twitter lacks the ability to sort tweets according to what the user wants. If I just want to see tweets from real people and not those that are automatically generated, I’m out of luck. Same goes if I want to keep certain friends’ tweets in a prominent place on my homepage; Twitter has no way of doing this.

Twitter users aren’t notified when someone responds to their tweet with an @Reply. I recently happened to look at @Replies on my Twitter homepage and found three from people who follow me (I don’t follow them).

If you’re adding a Web address to a tweet and the characters in the URL take up too much space, Twitter will automatically use TinyURL behind the scenes to shrink your long link into a shorter one when you post your tweet. But this works only if you have enough remaining characters in your tweet to fit the long version of your link. A built-in TinyURL converter on the page would help immensely.

Twitter says it’s working to make @Replies more effective. It also says it plans to do more with filtering and sorting, so that the Twitter interface is more useful. In the meantime, Twitter does a good job of giving people simplified news about others and the world around them. If you’re often in a rush, Twitter can be a great resource for fast information.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

• Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

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