I was really excited to hear that Twitter has raised $35 million in funding. I use it, I like it, I don’t love it, and I think its great for a variety of reasons. Most important to me is that Twitter is an anchor web 2.0 company and this funding (during a down time) will give them the resources to potentially mature into another Silicon Valley Powerhouse company. 6 months ago there were maybe a dozen or so anchor companies in web 2.0 out here with a second and third tiers of growing web 2.0 companies waiting in the wings. Now its a different story, with Tech Crunch even pronouncing the recent death of web 2.0
The movement, just like every thing else, has taken a beating at the hands of the economy. Unfortunately the market crash came at an imperative time for many web 2.0 companies, as many including my former employer were pursuing aggressive growth strategies and now find themselves over extended or effected by the poor fund raising and M/A markets. While this is a blow to a web 2.0 enthusiast like myself, the silver lining is that while the pack has thinned out there are still a lot of horses in the race and they are poised more then ever to make some noise. Included in this list are: – YouTube (Google owned) – Yelp – Digg – Linkedin – Twitter – Facebook and maybe some of their biggest application makers – Hulu (socal) – Tumblr (NYC), FriendFeed, Technorati, Six Apart, SimplyHired and Automatic all close behind. While this list shows a healthy web 2.0 core, the outer rings of the trend are having a tough go in 2009 and many will not survive. My guess is that a 1/3 of these companies may not be around next year with another 1/3 of them being a smaller then they were in 2008. 
With that in mind, its great to see Twitter bringing in such a substantial round of funding, and one that will likely lead to a more jobs within a really awesome and unique industry and culture that is unfortunately contracting. With millions of users, an impressive list of both main stream media and social media publications using the service, as well as hundreds of celebrities (Governator, Ashton Kutcher, Lance Armstrong, Brittney Spears, Karl Rove to name a few), Twitter is poised for a banner year that will likely make deep inroads across the country and abroad. One of the most famous Twitter user’s is Shaq who actually spent part of his day lost in Soma a couple weeks back looking for the Twitter office in hopes of buying them lunch. While he failed in finding the office (although he did alert the web 2.0 Soma Twitter mob that he was out and about), Shaq did succeed in continuing to try to make amends with Kobe via the Tweet below.
The two have a very complicated past full of its twist and turns. Its actually quite poetic as the two hash things out on Twitter as the whole rift really found new life via social media staple Youtube.
Shaq “Kobe Tell me how My Ass Taste”
