Twitter raises a few red flags in my mind. Not the concept. Not its popularity. Not how it is used. But I do have questions about  the speculative vagueness of its valuation.

So far, investors have put about $150 million into Twitter. A month ago, the Associated Press reported that Twitter is still sitting on a significant portion of this nest egg and is no a rush to expand its advertising base. So far. its only two revenue streams consist of:

• Selling its internal analytical data. I’ve seen no detailed information on what data are sold to whom—and how much Twitter is making from this revenue stream.
• Promoting Tweets–an innovative concept announced on April 13. This experiment in advertisingmay or may not work; it’s impossible to tell, because there’s no track record to go on. Plus, the Wall Street Journal reported that Twitter will split those “advertising revenues equally with smartphone and Web partners”, which will cut into this new income stream.

Twitter’s revenues so far may be minimal, but that’s not reflected in its valuation—according to the most commonly cited figure, the company is worth—1 billion dollars.

This valuation is not based on publicly scrutinized or audited figures, but on numbers floated to the media by Twitter and its potential suitors. Read more…

I’ve spent the past five months straddling two worlds.

One is the cutting-edge world of the MCDM program. The other is the non-academic world of my friends and family — all living full productive lives without much digital media in them.

I frequently have trouble explaining one world to the other.

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