Not too long ago, the infamous Michael Arrington of TechCrunch reported a rumor where he stated that Google was ( or maybe still is ) in talks to acquire Twitter. For a starter, it may be worthwhile to revisit his argument as to why Twitter is so valuable to acquire these days :

“More and more people are starting to use Twitter to talk about brands in real time as they interact with them. And those brands want to know all about it, whether to respond individually (The W Hotel pestered me until I told them to just leave me alone), or simply gather the information to see what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong.

And all of it is discoverable at search.twitter.com, the search engine that Twitter acquired last summer.

People searching for news. Brands searching for feedback. That’s valuable stuff.

Twitter knows it, too. They’re going to build their business model on it. Forget small time payments from users for pro accounts and other features, all they have to do is keep growing the base and gather more and more of those emotional grunts. In aggregate it’s extremely valuable. And as Google has shown, search is vastly monetizable – somewhere around 40% of all online advertising revenue goes to ads on search listings today.”

In other words, if left alone, Twitter will surely emerge as the new giant in the search industry, – complete with its abundant advertising dollars. The only question is, can Twitter sustain its current operation and mature to be a major player it seems destined to be ? Financially and technically, maintaining its operation as probably one of the strongest social media today must be a very complicated issue. Yet I don’t want to dwell on that.

What I want to talk about is Google’s take on this issue. If the rumor is true, it seems to me that it signals that they want to be the lone, solitary giant in the search engine realm of business. Not that there is anything wrong about that. We all know that as per today, they are the best in terms of skills and resources to serve the biggest search engine in the world.

What makes it more interesting is that Google actually proceeded to make its move by holding talks and discussions with Twitter before the other giant of the industry, Microsoft. Compared to the non-committal and complacent Microsoft, this implies that they again have a better sense of direction as to where the world Internet trends are shifting. And a good business forecasting ability is a crucial pre-requisite if one is to stand on the shoulder of giants.

It is now fascinating time as we wait in suspense whether Google and Twitter made progress in their discussions. On the one hand, Twitter CEO Evan Williams has already sold a successful product he made in the past to Google ( Blogspot ). On the other hand, there is this antitrust issues that put some constraints, – at least categorically, which dictates that Google should proceed carefully here. Again, Arrington noted about this too.

As we wait on any updates on this matter, I’ll just state that Google is showing that it is still going strong as a major giant here. And mind you, it is not a sleeping giant; but rather a very alert and sensible one.

When we enter the last month of the year, it is always interesting to predict what will happen in the next year. Not only amusing, a successful prediction often lead to a good anticipation of important business decisions to make. In this post, we are going to look at some available predictions from several sources.

• On Internet Marketing : “Internet marketing continues to grow in importance for many marketing managers”, according to Ad Operations. Creative digital marketing agency Strange (www.strangecorp.com) has also published a report outlining next year’s key trends in online marketing. As more advertisers look to digital, Strange believes that keyword inflation will most likely continue at a high level, and foresees more negotiating over CPA (cost per action/acquisition) advertising. Key areas for expansion will be mobile advertising, local search/localized services and social media.
• On Internet and Social Media : Compassion In Politics published an interesting prediction. In it, they identified some key points like : crowd sourcing will be a huge social media trend for 2009, a renewed focus on technology efficiency and productivity, leveraging offline connection with online connection, mobile and iPhone will continue to see massive user and application growth, video driven communities that drive conversation will take off in social media, and monetization will prove to be huge as more startups have to confront budgetary and cost-cutting issues. The WPromoter agrees with them on at least one point, – which is the prevalence of online video. On the other hand, they put more emphasis on the rise of local search, the supremacy of creativity, a more personal web and user-generated content.
• On Mobile : Daniel Robinson of Vnunet.com mentioned that mobile services specialist Critical Path sees five top trends already developing: the emergence of the ‘real’ smartphone; the development of vertical ecosystems such as Nokia’s Ovi; the digital divide; the re-emergence of location-based services; and the economic outlook. The ‘big five’ handset makers are likely to survive, but the market could see the emergence of a ‘big eight’ instead, as Apple, Google and RIM increase their share at the expense of the current dominant players, according to Donald Dew, chief technology officer at Critical Path.

All in all, their predictions clearly highlight that 2009 will be a very exciting year indeed. Just reading their predictions will give you all the excitements, – let alone incorporating them into your business planning of the oncoming year.

To get a better picture of the predictions, I strongly encourage you to read their post which I cite below :

• Key Online and Internet Marketing Trends in 2009 Revealed by Strange
• Top Seven Social Media, Online Marketing, and Internet Trends for 2009.
• 5 Trends to Watch for in 2009 and How to Make Them Work for Your Business.
• Critical Paths highlights key mobile trends for 2009

You might already aware of many pessimistic views about internet penetration in Indonesia, compared to Malaysia, Filipina or even small country like Singapore, somehow underestimated. You might also find that most Indonesian preferred into mobile primitive features like SMS and insignificant ring back tones than the border-less world wide web. It also took more than 5 years for big boy like Yahoo to eventually decided to explore more opportunities to go deep with millions of its Indonesian users by established more partnership with local players. With Indonesia current market development of mobile connectivity competition and local infrastructure availability, shall turn those pessimistic views.

SInce the end of 2007, the mobile industry had reached 100 million subscribers via various MNO (Mobile Network Operator) and FWA (Fixed Wireless Access). However it believed that the number doesn’t respectfully correspond to the usage of today’s technology (HSDPA, mobile web), until a leading mobile browser maker, Opera, released reports that SouthEast Asia is leading in mobile web usage and growth.

It reported that Indonesia ranks first in SouthEast Asia (and second worldwide) in usage with almost 330% user growth and 827% page view growth in 2008. Followed by Malaysia with 462.6%  user growth and 474.5% page view growth. Obviously, more Indonesian mobile subscribers are using their phone to go online today.

In many of Southeast Asian countries the mobile Web exists not because it complements existing means of access, but rather because it replaces them. Page view growth and pages per user are an interesting metric to see how much people use Opera Mini to browse the Web. It is interesting to note that page views per user in Indonesia and the Philippines are significantly higher than the worldwide numbers. In fact page views grew more than 1120% in the Philippines this year.

The report geographic focus is on Southeast Asia, where we see Google as the dominant player in the search engine space and Friendster as the premier social-networking site, with hi5 coming in second. Nokia is dominant in the region, with brands like Sony Ericsson and Huawei competing for a distant second place. Here’s the highlight.

• Indonesia and Malaysia lead the way for mobile Web adoption, followed by Thailand and Brunei.
• Indonesia leads the top 9 countries in page views, with each user browsing 358 pages on average in October 2008, well above the global average.
• Growth rates are soaring: Malaysia leads the top 9 with 462.6% growth in users this year, followed by the Philippines (396.4% growth) and Indonesia (329.5% growth.
• In Southeast Asia, among mobile Web users, Google is the dominant player in the search engine space, with Yahoo and Live Search vying for second place.
• Friendster is the premier social-networking site in the region, with hi5 coming in second.
• Nokia is dominant in the region, with brands like Sony Ericsson and Huawei competing for a distant second place.

On top sites rank by Indonesian unique users, Facebook made a big jump entering the list this month. The report also predicted about Facebook beat Friendster in the near future, “It will be interesting to see if Facebook will affect the dominance of Friendster in Indonesia”. Here’s the complete top sites viewed via  mobile:

1. friendster.com
2. google.com
3. gamejump.com (back on the list)
4. facebook.com (new)
5. yahoo.com (back on the list)
6. waptrick.com (new)
7. peperonity.com (down from 4)
8. wikipedia.org (down from 5)
9. getjar.com (back on the list)
10. gratisindo.com (down from 6)

and here is the top handsets for October 2008 (which use the Opera Browser):

1. Nokia 6600
2. Nokia N70
3. Nokia 3230
4. Nokia 7610
5. Nokia N73
6. Nokia 6300
7. Sony Ericsson W200i
8. Nokia 5310
9. Sony Ericsson K750i
10. Sony Ericsson K510i

It seems (Indonesia) mobile industry really helps bridging the gap of internet infrastructure thus accelerates nation-wide internet penetration (at least Opera enjoys it). I wonder if Blackberry will be listed in top handsets list by the end of 2008, noted that all major GSM operators offers Blackberry with affordable monthly plan connection package.

These development gave new insight of opportunities in mobile web, conventional web and mobile application. Simply develop “m” as your subdomain will extend your audience to mobile web users. You don’t even have to develop a special java application to comply the web communication model, most recognized format for mobile web is XHTML which took an article of web standards. Have you xhtml-ized your site?

For me, I prefer desktop/notebook view, using Sony Ericsson G502 as modem (traveling) or  view directly via NetFront Browser (pre-installed) with HSDPA connection. Quite fast!