Why You Can't Wait Another Day to Launch Your Twitter Startup

2011 is going to be the year of Twitter startups: if you've been playing with an idea for one, now's the time to get the ball rolling. Today marked a huge acquisition of a small Twitter startup that could signal good things to come for early Twitter-based startups, and getting in on these trends now can be the difference between a $10 million acquisition or a flop. This morning TechCrunch reported that Google acquired a small Twitter startup called fflick. This startup is a simple movie review site that uses Twitter to measure movie sentiment and power recommendations. And it sold for $10 million. As TechCrunch reports, fflick might remain in service, or Google might use its team and technology to help power a separate service. Either way, the creators of the startup win. fflick is a young startup, created in August 2010 by four former Digg employees. In just five months, the team built their product and sold it for $10 million - not a bad turnaround. Twitter is the hot commodity in both the mainstream and niche markets today. Celebrities and politicians are jumping on the bandwagon, businesses are being told they can't afford not to have a presence on Twitter, and people from all corners of the globe are signing up to see what all the hype is about. If you have a Twitter startup idea, you'd best start making it a reality now. Not tomorrow - today. Twitter is exploding in growth and reach, and big companies like Google are looking for a way to harness the power of sentiment analysis, mass opinions, trends, influencers and more. You might be overwhelmed by the sheer number of startups already out there. Just taking a look at this infographic, which shows dozens of popular third-party Twitter apps, is enough to discourage the indecisive businessperson from jumping into the fray. But you'd be wrong not to trust yourself here, if you've got a killer idea. There may be hundreds of Twitter-related startups, apps and websites out there, but that doesn't mean there is any less demand for them. And it also doesn't mean that they are all high-quality startups like fflick. fflick was successful in its acquisition because it is simple, effective and technologically refined. It enables a quick-and-easy user experience, which requires only a movie title entered into a search bar to get started. The results that it displays are relevant, sorted, and targeted. And the technology to come up with these results is no doubt the real reason Google saw such value in fflick. So if you've been toying around with a Twitter search idea, a marketing tool or a mashup, don't keep it on the back burner any longer. You'll see startups getting gobbled up for similar amounts as fflick in the coming 12-24 months, and who knows? The next big Twitter hit could be yours.

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Why You Can't Wait Another Day to Launch Your Twitter Startup

Lauren Dugan

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Lauren Dugan