10 Ways Twitter will forever change business and #2 is measurement

This piece in 25/7 Wallstreet on  Ten Ways Twitter Will Permanently Change American Business a great piece on the implications of Twitter.
Its a long one, so if you want the highlights here they are, in, naturally, what I consider priority order.

1. Twitter will change how marketers measure success. Billboards and ads that rely on eyeballs for metrics will be supplanted with direct feedback from Twitterers. Instead of a billboard for a car hoping to reach commuters and influence them in some amorphous way, author Doug McIntyre suggests that viewers could actually Tweet the local dealership -- a much more effective measure of success.
2. Hyper-local marketing -- Twitter will become a great, inexpensive way for small local businesses to get information out to their marketplace.
3. Twitter will replace Forums and Yahoo groups as the place people go to discuss stocks.
4. Twitter will democratize both content and the advertising that goes with it.
5. Twitter will change how we collect and mine data.
6. Twitter, as the Red Cross has already demonstrated , will become a key part of our national security and readiness infastructure.
7. Twitter will become the new PayPal and Western Union
8.  Twitter will become the fundraising vehicle of choice for non-profits.

Comments

[SiteBetter]

Somehow, I do not believe in all this. I think these are some pretty big claims. I think Twitter is very much a passing fade. Think about it: marketers are saying you need to get to know your prospect in order to convert them into a customer. Twitter is just a bunch of headlines and billboards.

For instance, on #3, you say Twitter will replace forums. How could that be? There is no real discussion going on in Twitterland. It's just a bunch of people peddling their products. Granted there are a few instances of where someone is helped by someone else or finds a product they need, but that is in very much the minority. Places where people get the most help and information is where there is a more robust dialogue taking place, like a forum.

Your claims are kind of like the claims made by the media (and scared moms) back in the early eighties when the Walkman came on the scene. Everyone thought their child or whomever was going to tune out all day. For a long time it was true, lots of people put on their orange headphones everywhere they went, but now not so much, except where it is necessary like the gym. I never see anyone listening to their iPod in line at the store. So, the hype faded; pretty quickly, too.

This Twitter business will be pretty much old hat because the principle just does not hold up. Twitter is to bumper stickers as a website is to an infomercial. There is just not enough info on this Twitter. Twitter is like those knuckleheads who put their contact information on their car, like I am going to find a quality photographer from someone whizzing down the highway. Or it’s like those stupid signs in the grass on the side of the road telling me I can make six figures and all I have to do is call their phone number. So that is where all the six figure incomes are, on the side of the road plastered on a sign stuck in the grass? Twitter is just a billboard; that’s all. Don’t invest your life in it.

Anyway, mark my words: Twitter is a passing fade. Oh, by the way, you can find me at: /ResortsWeb and /SiteBetter on Twitter. Yes, I am on Twitter.

[Jeremy Dent]

If anything, this could be understating the case. If not Twitter, then another, more innovative tool.

Remember how nearly every online initiative has been pooh-poohed only for the commentator to end up in their own poo-poo!

[Vic]

Some very bold assumptions for something that has a huge dropout rate. Will be a long time till this is the way to measure marketing efforts - it is only one very small piece of a very large puzzle.