Another Vote for Twitter

John Battelle is pretty dismissive in his recent post about Twitter.  Not dismissive about Twitter — the opposite:  he’s dissing a report in the NY Times by Sanford Bernstein analysts that Twitter will never develop a revenue stream. Sanford Bernstein says that Twitter is unlikely ever to generate positive cash flow, and will either just fail or last until it is overcome by the next web 2.0 phenomena.

In retort, Battelle says:

Twitter is a very promising service directly in the center of these trends [web 2.0 business applications], trends the “analysts” at Sanford Bernstein clearly do not grasp.

Battelle lists 3 ways Twitter might monetize its traffic:

1. Tweetsense – an advertising platform somehow linked to the content of the tweets.
2. Branded licensing – Twitter collects fees to promote Twitter-based services, for example.
3. SMS revenue sharing – Twitter drives millions of SMS to mobile devices, and there may be some leverage for them to share these revenues.

This deal is not done, but from Battelle’s history with search and the evolution of the online conversation, I wouldn’t bet against him on this one.  And it doesn’t take much imagination to see how powerful Twitter can be as a conversation-carrier that is loaded with search and linking potential.