There has been a lot of discussion recently about how Twitter can capitalize on its phenomenal growth, and actually start earning some money. Much of the discussion recently has focused on search. The logic, paraphrased, is this: Twitter returns instant results, giving it an advantage over Google and other search engines. It has the added benefit of allowing people to pose questions to the masses, and (hopefully) generate immediate, and correct, answers.

 

there is a lot of logic to these lines of thought, but also some inherent problems.

 

I see a number of reasons that monetizing Twitter search is not a viable long term business model.