Why Twitter's IPO is still a bargain

Sure there's nothing at all wrong with composing 140 character "micro blog" posts to share with your friends and followers, and the market today gave it's IPO verdict: "That's pretty dang cool."

Embedded in the market valuation is the considered realization that Twitter provides connective tissue to the social network, best-epitomized by Facebook and numerous lesser rivals.  With tweeting to connect Facebook posts and status updates widely to busy friends and followers, Twitter likewise provides critical infrastructure to mobile photo and video sharing utilities like Instagram, Pinterest and Vine, just to name a few.  Twitter's potential will likely just increase as more mobile apps and social utilities develop and proliferate, most piggy-backing on Twitter networks for broadcast and re-tweet to wider networks of like-minded followers, perhaps adding thousands of hash-tagged ad-hock audiences each month eager for fresh content no matter how silly it may be.

When Twitter first appeared in my life in 2009, it reminded me immediately of an early global microsatellite application called Orbcomm, which was birthed in the early 1990s by commercial space pioneer Orbital Sciences Corporation.  Orbcomm introduced me to the amazing capacity of short message "packets" to convey commercially-valuable information in short bursts of fewer than 160 characters.  Using the Orbcomm global network, trucks could relay their GPS location and condition of the cargo they were carrying in microbursts of numeric information via satellite without hogging radio spectrum or expensive bandwidth.

Fast forward ten years to the explosion in cell phone SMS (Short Message Service) texting, which, it turned out, came built-in with every cell phone in existence because every phone call it transmitted required a short data instruction to direct it across the network.  Once carriers discovered it could sell text messages to customers at zero additional cost to them, it did not foresee that texting would replace trillions of voice phone calls with short text messages.  Text messaging taught generations of traditional phone users that talk isn't always cheap, less is more, and short is sweet.

Sometime later, in 2006, the Twitterverse threw open its doors, and through them flew throngs of 140 character thoughts that attracted people to follow them.  The rest is history, they could say after today's 77% bump above the New York Stock Exchange's "TWTR" open.  But I say it's barely the beginning.

The difference between SMS and Twitter is simply that instead of sending a text message from one person to another, you broadcast (or narrowcast) the message to groups of people called "followers."  Now imagine what is possible when networks of tweeters and followers not teenagers or news hounds, but machines and devices that can communicate data compute autonomously with each other.  Twitter is the infrastructure for all forms of transparent data exchanges and transparent real-time massively distributed computation that could lead the way to brain-like function on a global scale.

The best thing is I don't even know what it is I am talking about yet in terms of practical uses that the Twitter infrastructure could enable, but these could include instantaneous "sensory" feedback networks that exceed supercomputer-scale data processing.  The simplest precursor example might be what humans' tweeting does to create "flash mobs," where hundreds of people show up in one place at one time.  What if certain tweets could summon millions of coded status messages from millions of nodes around the world, or by "re-tweeting" the most important or nearest information to form clouds and clusters of activity that can be seen on a map?

The big caveat on my predictions of autonomous tweeting applications is they do not fall neatly into the current Twitter business model which is to generate profits by pushing advertising into Twitter user's phones.  Today's IPO was largely based on predictions of a vastly growing number of users who can be fed short, clever, and non-intrusive advertisements that are tailored to the user's transparent preferences and interests.  If machines follow other machines on the Twitter network as I've suggested, advertisers would well wonder, "what's in it for me."  Humans buy things.  Machines don't.

At least that's how it is-- for now.

Why did I ever leave you in the first place?

It's sad realizing that my last post here was Christmas Eve, December 2012, oh some 10 months ago.

Whatever possessed me to stop writing (and ranting) here can best be described as a total solar eclipse that I forgot to wear protective glasses for.  Not that I have a huge blog following, but my sitting to compose my thoughts and share them is a wonderfully therapeutic exercise that I was a fool to give up.

Think what we've missed.  No, don't do that.  In my last missive before going on hiatus from this space, I talked about appreciating and doing smaller things that have impact, versus grandiose plays that have led to disaster in 2012.  So what of those "smaller" things?

In February, I followed my own advice and moved to work for the Chamber of Commerce in Bowling Green, Kentucky.  Bowling Green is a dynamic small city that feels like a boom town on the Western Frontier.  The banking community here never fell for the sub-prime mortgage craze, so it never had to roll-up bad loans and sell them off to some fools (who, it turned out, meant the rest of us) as hedged derivatives or toxic assets.  Instead, Bowling Green grew rapidly by making wise investments in economic development infrastructure like an ambitious downtown development district and acquiring land in industrial parks that it can effectively give away to high-wage manufacturing concerns.

Living here is definitely slower-paced, but far from backward.  There's a growing tech sector that may soon find its footing someplace between medical devices and IT for streamlining healthcare payment systems, or perhaps in materials science.  Though Kentucky is best-known for bourbon and racehorses, Bowling Green is best-known for Big Red (the mascot of Western Kentucky University) and General Motors' Corvette Assembly plant.  Between these two institutions, a growing university and a wildly popular sports car, there's a keen appreciation for making things happen.


This is, fittingly enough, where U.S. Senator Rand Paul chose to make his life.  Before the Tea Party boils over from over-reaching the laws of political physics, it's worth noting that "The Land of Rand" is hardly a backwater of ignoramuses, at least no more than New York or San Francisco or any other "trendier" place than Kentucky.  Indeed, Sen. Paul is a perfect reflection of the common sense, smaller-is-better, humility that characterizes Bowling Green and his early career as an ophthalmologist helping people see better.

When I had the chance to meet him, he was talking through the mechanics of how over-regulated health care simply leads to costlier health care.  It was the least-ideological talk I had heard in a long time, striking in that Sen. Paul has been branded as an "ideologue."  Instead of a lot of blustery red-baiting or even questioning the motives behind Obamacare, Sen. Paul stuck to the practical insanity of doubling the number of diagnostic codes providers will need to begin using "to save costs."  "Did you know there are now 12 new diagnostic codes for being struck by a bird, including two just for the macaw?" he asked, armed with dozens of similar anecdotes.  "There are two codes for running into a lamp post-- 'first encounter' and 'second encounter.'"

The Kentucky Senator's clear-headed approach to taking down Obamacare was spot-on long before the HealthCare.Gov web site fiasco gave Americans a taste for Dr. Big Brother.  No matter what (Texas U.S. Senator) Ted Cruz may tell you, the only way to fight the evils of socialized medicine is to vaccinate the public with very facts and experiences they are being infected with by Obamacare.  Just as sometimes vaccines cause death, Obamacare will have many victims.  It will be a more powerful wake up call than its opponents shouting from rooftops.  In this, conservatives should take a cue from the soft-spoken eye doctor from Bowling Green and let the deadly facts of Obamacare speak for themselves.