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I love reading articles that question if Twitter is going to make money. It seems like everyone in the entire world has published a piece like that lately. I’ve even had, oh, 5-10 different people ask me how I thought Twitter would make money (maybe because I’ve always stated I thought it could be huge), though generally it’s asked in either an accusatory or skeptical tone.

Look, there are a lot of barriers to becoming a multi-billion dollar business with a sustainable, high-margin, defensible business that “prints money” (though Twitter seem to think it’ll build one). You can count on a hand or two the Internet companies that have done it. But I always find it humorous when a journalist who has talked to a few commentators, or a random person on the street who has thought about a company for a few minutes announces triumphantly that they don’t know how the product will monetize efficiently.

A few weeks ago, I came upon a BusinessWeek article that talked about a young, hyper-growth Internet company. It read:

But how will [the company] ever make money? There’s the rub. The company’s adamant refusal to use banner or other graphical ads eliminates what is the most lucrative income stream for rival [Internet properties].

It was an article that succinctly conveyed the popular opinion of the company at the time and made a number of cynical assumptions about how the company was ignoring some fairly common ways to make money.

And of course, the article was about Google.

Google. Current Market Cap: $138B

Now I’m not saying Twitter will be as big as Google or even that they’ll become *just* a large business. There are a ton of hurdles for it to get there, not the least of which is not stifling its growth by spending energy putting banner ads on twitter.com when so many of Twitter users don’t even use the website. But think about this:

• (Tens or Hundreds of?) Thousands of businesses are already using Twitter for customer service, PR, and marketing.
• Hundreds of thousands of businesses are wondering how to use Twitter to get their message out more effectively. They’re trying new things and clamoring for better tools.

Now if you can’t think of a way to make money in an environment like that when you’re sitting on top of one of the fastest-growing Internet properties in history, then you’re either not thinking hard enough or… worse.

As a Twitter user, I’m glad they’re, as Jeff Bezos said in video yesterday, “Thinking Long-term.” Now if they’re still not making money a year from now, well… good luck to them .

(As an aside, it’s fitting that the Zappos CEO happens to be one of the best examples of using Twitter effectively in business: http://twitter.com/Zappos)

It seems like folks in the Silicon Valley have been talking about the promise of mobile technologies and location-based services (LBS, for short) as long as I can remember. “Golly, just imagine when you’ll be able to walk down the street and randomly decide that you need some crack immediately, so you pull out your hologram mobile phone which will render a visual avatar (Star Wars-style) which will tell you where the nearest drug dealer is to score some rock. Won’t that be amazing?”

With that being said, and given a healthy amount of accompanying skepticism and cynicism, I dare say that location-based services really are on the cusp of mainstream. Just yesterday, Google launched this Loopt-lookalike called Google Latitude which essentially lets you stalk the shit out of your friends, assuming that they either a) mis-read the directions and accidentally consent to getting stalked, or b) actually let you see where they are.

What does that mean? Yesterday, when I arrived home in Palo Alto, I casually saw that my buddy Ben, who lives in San Francisco but whose girlfriend lives in Palo Alto, happened to be just a few blocks away at that exact moment. Kinda neat, yeah? We could meet up for a beer. And… that’s about the only useful real-world application I’ve found for the thing so far. That’s not to say stalking Husband of Pseudostoops as he commutes from Chicago to Evanston and back over Google Latitude isn’t fun, but it really isn’t a real use case beyond idle entertainment.

But I think Latitude is an enabler, not an actual application. And while products like Loopt were pushing in that direction, the truth is that starting up a service like that from scratch can take a while (even Twitter took years to get where it is now) and a catalyst like the latent email address books of millions of Gmail users is not a meaningless thing (though some folks who cry about Google copying Loopt would want you to believe that a product head start is all that matters). By the way, isn’t Google being pretty smart about leveraging that asset as a social network/graph these days?

Ultimately Latitude (and similar services) will only become really useful when really useful stuff is built on top of it. Anyone who’s seen Yelp on an iPhone knows that. Well, what are those applications? They’re literally everywhere if you think hard enough. I want a weather map that tells me exactly what’s going to happen within 100 feet of where I am in the next hour (without typing a bunch of shit in). I want to find 10 dudes within a mile radius who want to go play some pick-up basketball around the corner. I want to see a map of all the open parking spots within four blocks of this god forsaken place and reserve one for myself. See? That took 15 seconds to come up with those.

This could be the start of a big deal… or all of those crack addicts will have to keep picking their stuff up the normal way.

I’ve gotten some random pings from folks lately asking:

• What happened to that crazy lifestyle eating change you were on? Are you still doing that?
• Have any New Year’s Resolutions?

Good questions both. One quick note, I usually do 5 New Year’s Resolutions every year, but I don’t call them that because it sounds like they’re afterthoughts and the word ‘resolution’ now has a loaded connotation of ‘IMPENDING COMPLETE FAILURE COMING MOMENTARILY’.

Instead, I usually call them ’simplifying principles’ because they’re things I’d really like to actively focus on this year and they’re meant to simplify my life, not add some additional thing I won’t remember to do. Before I get to those…

The Eating Thing

If you’ll remember, last year I attempted (mostly successfully) to undo 26 years of awful eating habits and prepare myself for the distinct eventuality that the next 30 years of my life are going to consist of: 1) working a lot, and 2) a gradually slowing metabolism. Let’s be very clear about this: I know of (maybe) five Asian males over the age of 35 who are not noticeably overweight. That’s it. If you’re Asian and your Dad is not overweight, then I’ll take your word for it and add him to the list, though he’s probably already one of the five.

With that backdrop, and because I often like to pit myself in games of will power against myself, I spent some time reading up on “What does eating healthy really MEAN?” last year and then attempted to live by that for 12 months. The results were largely good and I think the number of meals I strayed was probably less than 30.

This year I’ve made one slight adjustment to the approach, which I don’t think will make a material difference in practice, but I think will make an enormous difference in my personal mental state when driving by an In-n-Out. And that leads me to the five simplifying principles (of course non-work-related):

1. Eat healthy (as defined in 2008), with the exception that for every week in which I work out 3+ times, I get one free meal to eat whatever I want. Hopefully for all parties involved, that will be 52 weeks.
2. Write a short story. This was originally “Write more,” but in the name of setting actionable, measurable principles. Regardless, “Write more” is baked into this.
3. Read and thoughtfully review at least 12 books
4. Visit at least one new foreign country
5. Launch a couple (at least 2) useful, interesting sites

I would have added a sixth and a seventh (”Tailgate at least 10 times” and “Lower the beer to other beverages ratio”), but a) they seemed to work directly against one another, b) the seventh is pretty much covered by my #1, and c) I just really wasn’t ready to commit to seven different principles.

Let’s all have a solid 2009, people.

Big weekend for NFL-watching as I’ll be in Las Vegas placing wagers on these games and my fantasy team will be locked in a mortal death match with Kingsley’s:

As you can see, it would be a total travesty if that squad was to lose to CharlesHaleyFanClub. I also have to remember to pack my Brent Jones jersey for Vegas so I can scream obscenities at Dolphins fans and come off as a passionate fan instead of a crazy person.

Last week: 7-9
Overall Season Results: 110-96-2

Thursday posted Wednesday evening