After the news of Twitter‘s recent additional $35mm third round, it’s re-release of search.twitter.com, and just surfing thru tweets- I thought about something interesting – what is their plan?

Facebook made a half-hearted attempt to acquire them – a mostly stock offer, which Twitter rightly rejected (and which we can now see renders Twitter irrelevant to FB). But I believe that Evan, Biz, Jack and crew have loftier expectations than a quick sale.  This is the guy who created Blogger- arguably starting the engine of the user-driven content world we find ourselves in (or at the very least providing the framework for the UGC revolution).

So who would be a good suitor for Twitter?  I’ll tell you who it won’t be: Google.  They recently bought and shuttered Jaiku – a twitter competitor.  Although it may seem like a huge opportunity for Google to basically own the real-time search market; Eric Schmidt’s recent comments about the company seem to indicate that they are not in M&A mode anymore (he explicitly states that prices are still too high). It won’t happen.

But let’s look to one of the best known news companies in the world – the New York Times. I know – it sounds crazy at first. What would a newspaper do with Twitter? Well – nothing. But the New York Times Company is much more forward looking than any other paper. With ownership of About.com, investments in AppSavvy, Brightcove, and FM Publishing – a different picture emerges. Namely – that this company “gets it”. They also have the largest readership (online) of any newspaper site (13mm + according to ComScore) – and by far.

Additionally – they have a whole team dedicated to testing new technology (some of the fruits of their labor are available here).

So the paper of record gaining access to a real-time hive mind – interesting, no? Twitter as a lead source. Twitter as a fact-checking mechanism. Twitter as a link distribution outlet. Think of all the possibilities. Now, all anyone has to figure out is how to monetize it. We have come a long, long way from the days of the every-other-day Fail Whale.

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