I read a great ReadWriteWeb article the other day with an interesting recommendation for a Business Model for Twitter.  The article explains how Twitter could sell promotions for a 'Recommended Person to Follow' to brands looking to add more followers.

Although I am a bit skeptical about the size of the market for this specific offering - I do think it's a step  in the right direction.  What is important about this approach (and that the article failed to mention) is that it would pair perfectly with Twitter Search - and serve as Twitter's version of AdSense: A perfectly optimized marketplace connecting Users looking for information & people to follow and brands looking to market their expertise & gain followers.  By focusing on Search,  Twitter has an opportunity to compete Google and Yahoo for search advertising dollars by dominating the 'Real Time Web' - the one thing the big guys actually aren't that good at.  Finally Twitter also has a unique opportunity to revolutionize this search space by establishing a PageRank for people, escalating/highlighting the search results of 'authoritative' users based on quantity and quality of the people following them - much like Google's PageRank does for websites.

As John Battelle noted the other day - Google and Yahoo realize this last point as much as anyone, which is why they have yet to directly integrate Twitter Search results into their on Search Engine Results Pages - and therefore validating Twitter as the central nervous system of the real time internet. 

So I recently signed up for twitter and hearing about it and reading about it online (this TechChrunch article finally pushed me over the edge).

What it really reminds me of is old AOL IM away messages, or more currently, Facebook status updates - just on steroids. I really think Tweeter just brings to those applications what RSS feed does for news sources...allows you to quickly see what people are up to, thinking, saying about your company - all in one place.

Which bring me to why is this even necessary? If Twitter is just a new way to communicate with my existing network is it destined to fall our favor once other social networking sites add these features? Is micro-blogging its own niche threw which Twitter can take over?

My take, at least for now, is no.  There will be a convergence of social networks happening soon and I fear for any social networking site whose killer app is sole communications tool, not an entire platform. There is simply no logical reason for me to maintain my status/profile/friends on multiple sites. I'm not sure Facebook is the answer, or if the Google led open social initiative will solve this problem, but at some point it has to come together. I am one person, with one profile and one network.

That said - we are still on the tip of the iceberg for social media. Location based social networking is going to be huge and the engineers certainly aren't done innovating in the communications space yet.  It'd just be nice if I didn't have to manually sync my phone with my Facebook profile when it happens...