I find it somewhat humorous that while one of the bigger stories this morning is the one by Allen Stern entitled ‘Is Twitter F’ed?‘ and basically calls into question Twitter’s ability to survive after launching without a solid business plan, another popular story by Duncan Riley entitled ‘Now You Can Graph Your Twitter Usage‘ opens with “Twitter has the potential of breaking into the mainstream this year. A lot of what’s going on around Twitter is not dissimilar to the earlier days of blogging”. So which is it, Twitter is dead or Twitter is the future?

Well while what Allen says is perfectly rational, this is the web baby, no business plans (necessarily) required. I like to think of it like the Land Run of 1889. Everyone is simply running around trying to grab their piece of of the land even if they have no idea what do with it when they get it.

If Twitter has hundreds of thousands or even millions of dedicated users and one day they need to make money, they can simply start inserting brief ads into Twitter streams similar to the way Facebook does in their News Feeds. Jason Calacanis lays out this as well as a thought for a ‘premium’ Twitter, either of which would work and could be done very easily.

Twitter also might be leaning towards the easiest monetization method: be bought out by a bigger company and let them worry about monetization.

Allen also mentions Pownce as an example of how to launch with a business model, which is all well and good, though in sticking with the Land Run reference, I would say that Pownce has thus far failed to secure the land – which is simply more important than the business model.

Twitter has the buzz and more importantly has a ton of loyal followers, the latter being the hard thing to get. Over the past year we’ve watched a lot – and I do mean a lot – of people write off Twitter as one of the dumber ideas they’ve ever seen on the Internet, only to turn around and become addicted users a few months later. Twitter is here to stay. The monetization will come even if it’s after they sell to a larger company.

More thoughts:

• Twitter Is In the Eye of the Beholder
• Pownce Prettys Up, Twitter Still Looking Good
• Twitter Once Again Come Through In An Emergency Situation
• Has Twitter Just Twittered the Shark?
• Yep, Facebook Is Gunning For Twitter
• Facebook Goes Live With Their New Look, Dare I Say Twitter Inspired?
• Newsweek Jumping On the Twitter Wagon
• Facebook To Be More Like Twitter
• Twitter My News To Me Fast
  
• Twittering the Night Away: Twitter Is Blowing Up