Rumor has it that Twitter raised yet another round of funding, putting its valuation anywhere from $60 to $150 million. Is it worth that much?

I return to the whole adage: something is merely worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it - even if that amount seems retarded. In this case, I still believe Twitter will be acquired this year, for a surprising amount that everyone will shake their head in disbelief.

Granted, there’s been much talk about Twitter’s lack of a business model: absolutely no monetization strategy other than the possibility of ads in the feeds which will likely piss users off, and limited mainstream awareness / appeal.

I suggest recalling the iffy-at-the-time YouTube acquisition. Back in 2006, they had zip as a monetization strategy, just tons of traffic. So much traffic to serve up video, that people wondered if they would be done in by high bandwidth fees. Others worried that copyright issues would destroy the company. They didn’t have a clear road to profitability. Just before the acquisition, it was either get more funding, sell to a company with bigger resources, or go under. Luckily Google came in at the last minute and bought YouTube. They still don’t have a killer monetization strategy.

Anyhow, my point is: I don’t think any of Twitter’s recent woes like prohibitive down time our ousting employees will matter. They will be purchased by someone focused on the hockey-stick growth and rabid user base. A large acquiring company may also provide resources to improve their scaling issues.

And as for Twitter as a service? I first checked it out about a year ago and thought it was intriguing. It’s so easy a chimp could do it, so I feel it has much potential to go mainstream. It’s also one of the few Web 2.0 sites I still use on a daily basis (the other being FriendFeed). And last I checked the user base doesn’t consist of chimpanzees.

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