While sceptics will prefer to see the detail of Twitter’s business plans, venture capitalists are already betting on Twitter’s growth to provide solid returns in the eco-system of web applications surrounding the service.
Stocktwits, a stock tracking application, recently garnered $800,000 in funding and this month TweetDeck, a Twitter application created by British programmer Iain Dodsworth, raised $500,000 in angel investment. Tweetdeck is a free software download that organises a user’s Twitter stream into more manageable and useful feeds. It is aimed more at “power users” – those who follow dozens or even hundreds of other twitterers. TweetDeck has been downloaded 250,000 times since its launch only last summer. Twitterers are sending out 120,000 messages a day using the software.
