Twitter can be a success on a smaller scale
When Google filed to go public in 2004, it finally revealed just how clever a trick it had devised by targeting ads to search queries.
Android and Chrome, barges and books, cars and glasses, laptops and phones, and much, much more.
[...] for big egos, media personalities, news junkies, experts, brands, advertisers, publicists and many others, it has become an indispensable tool for participating in the news, events and debates of the day.
Smart, alternate takes I once would have missed rise in my feed on their merits, deemed worthy by writers and thinkers I trust via retweets and favorites.
Twitter can also apply at least a subtle democratizing force to the story lines, allowing audience, journalist and subject alike to express and amplify their view (though admittedly not necessarily on the same scale, depending on follower counts).
For that reason alone, Twitter seems to have a reasonable shot of becoming nicely profitable, even if it never achieves the mainstream appeal of Facebook and Google.
To gain a bigger share of audience and advertising, the company can simplify the service, articulate its purpose better and make smarter use of data for targeting ads.
In the years ahead, though, I doubt we'll see the science fiction experiments of a Google or promises to connect the developing world like Facebook.