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There’s been a few interesting posts recently (see bottom of post) about how one of the issues we have currently is we have companies that are considered “too big to fail”. That we have to bail out banks, because if they fail, the economy breaks down totally, and it’s not a far jump from that to rats gnawing on your cold lifeless body in the street.

I was at a Yeah Yeah Yeahs gig last week, and between the support act and my second favourite half Korean coming onto stage, the solution dawned on me, as blindingly obvious.

Every time (not this year but the last 10) a company (Oil/Banking/etc) makes ludicrous profits (Billion dollars a second yadda yadda) everyone’s up in arms, as it’s immoral and wrong and we should impose a windfall tax.

I’m against windfall taxes. They sound like a good idea, but I think they’re mostly desired out of misplaced moral outrage (under the false assumption no one should make that much money) and not any decent economic reasons. If companies are making money be being anti-competitive, then competition authorities should come down on them. If it’s just a result of running a successful business then well done to them and we should move on.

I do however have a massive issue with bailing out these companies after they spent year after year declaring ludicrous profits. Yo banks, I’m looking in your direction.

The solution of course is not a ‘windfall tax’ but a bailout tax. When companies reach a certain size such that their failure would have impacts beyond their market and into the general populace, they have a choice. They can spin off sections of themselves into independent companies and slim down such that the failure of any single part would not have severe economic consequences.

Or they have to pay a bailout tax. This tax money would go into a government reserve (some fiscally stable system) and not general taxation. And when companies fail this money is drawn on to bail them out. This saves us printing new money (cough sorry quantitative easing) or borrowing such that my friends’ children will grow up in debt having to bail the lot of us out.

Now of course if a business doesn’t fail, the money goes to bail out businesses that do. That’s how insurance companies work and well let’s be honest, we need a few more insurances. And businesses don’t have to pay the tax. They can avoid the tax, by avoiding being too big to fail; otherwise when you’re declaring £10 billion a quarter in profit, you can pay a hefty chunk of that to make sure it’s not frigging me that’s bailing you out.

I want my tax money to go to something useful. And bailouts are not useful, but needed when things have gone too far wrong. I shouldn’t be the one paying for your mistakes.

I'm sure twitter has a list a thousand items long called "Stuff to do". We have at vzaar and it always grows quicker than it shrinks, so I'm sure Twitter has more important things to do.

However, I think their is a certain time sensitivity to these things, and they are roughly related and I think it would be a good thing for both Twitter and the ecosystem if they did.

URL shorteners (if you didn't know, I know you know) take a long messy url and ... um ... shorten it it a small tight nifty url. There's a good explanation here: The Benefits And Pitfalls of URL Shortener.

With Twitters recent rise to rule-the-worldom, URL shortners are both back (it used to just be TinyURL that did then, now everyone and their spambot has one). Of course this has brought a whole host of problems and highlighted all the issues with URL shortners.

A lot of this is Twitters fault in a way. It's the 140 character limit that requires the use of URL Shorteners. However the same reason means Twitter has a great opportunity to control and win the space, and control means you can extract the most value out of it.

Not only should Twitter create their own independent service, they should incorporate this into their API. This gets the app developers on board and it makes their life easier by just working with one API. I would imagine if the twitter website and most clients are using their url shortener, they'll quickly dominate the market on Twitter, and not far behind it too.

Controlling this market is useful. Because you know what's inside those urls. You also know what kind of click through they are getting (useful data to both Twitter and the users). You can also flag spam more easily (and we know this is going to be an bigger issue than it already is), and if you are flagging spam more easily, you can build up trust that Twitter URLS are safer, which they should be.

Many people are saying the value in Twitter is less in premier user services and more in the fact it's become a "real time search engine". If that's the case they need to know what's in those URLS and the best way to do it is bake it right in.

This also allows Twitter to expand the URLs in mediums where the 140 chars is less of an issue (at least on the web and in the API returns). This makes it more valuable to developers, and should have quick take up.

The use experience could be vastly improved. Just say we know any URL size is 25 chars long (the size of the Twitter web default of TinyURL. Then anytime someone enters a URL, you can just carry on typing to 115 chars. No need to worry about size limit. You can add on a feature that automatically shows all your Twitter URLs, and their click throughs on the twitter website (or via the API). I suspect this alone would kill all the competition.

So in summary

• There's knowledge in the URL
• Twitter could know the knowledge
• Knowledge has value
• Twitter is uniquely position to dominate this space

Twitpic is really just an extension of this. It's a specialised URL shortner for pictures. In fairness there is less knowledge in this that's of direct value, but I still think Twitter should bring this in house. Unlike a URL shortner I think Twitter should buy twitpic, rather than do their own.

AFAIK Noah Everett is running twitpic.com as a one man operation and has done a great job. He's built up his own little community and I think the goodwill would do a lot for Twitter buying this. He also has 1000000 pics plus on the service and is the biggest player in this space.

However the space is fracturing, and everyones trying to get in on it. Again Twitter can do interesting things here by controlling and dominating the space (especially with the API). Whilst I don't think they should expand the 140 character limit, they should realise people are posting pictures and a lot of them. Control the space before someone controls it for you.

An interesting thing here would be building in an automatic licensing system for the press or other people who want to use public pictures. Put all pictures on a creative common license and allow the press to use them if they pay a fee. Percentage of the free goes to the user and percentage to Twitter. Users can turn this off if they want.

Think of some of the great consolidated image feeds one could build of live events, from social (gigs, sports) to news (protests, planes landing in the Hudson).

In short:

Twitter, you should do your own url shortener and buy twitpic. Really you should. I'm smart and right, and it would make your service even more awesome.

Always happy to help.

[UPDATE: 2009.05.06]

Looks Like I'm not far off. Prediction: Twitter to acquire bit.ly within the year

TechCrunch - URL Shortening Wars: Twitter Ditches TinyURL For bit.ly

This is actually not that much of a surprise. Betaworks, the startup accelerator behind Twitter related companies such as Summize (acquired by Twitter in July 2008), is also behind bit.ly, and it just happens to also count early Twitter investors and advisors Chris Sacca and Ron Conway as their own backers.

Which obviously prompts this inevatible question: does the move signal Twitter paving the way for an outright acquisition of the URL shortening service provider?

ReadWriteWeb - Twitter Crowns Bit.ly As The King of Short Links; Here's What It Means

Once Bit.ly has been put to enough use, and today's news will likely be a big part of that happening, you'll be able to ask it questions like: within the last hour, what are the five hottest web pages about President Obama's budget? What social networks are sharing links to my web page the most today? What are ornithologists on Twitter most interested in this week?

The columns and rows here are semantic key terms on pages shared, method of sharing used (Facebook, Twitter, email, etc.), number of click-throughs, time and person who created the original shortcut. There's a whole lot you can do when you have that kind of information about a link. Bit.ly says its API isn't quite there yet, but it's close.

I love this video.

I wish I could argue this well.

It would make these blog posts much better written. * The last maybe one day discussion ever. I wish * The god in the coincidence

This image is doing the rounds of most major newspapers today, I assume because it has the makings of an 'iconic image'.

Capitalism has failed, the people rise up, yadda yadda yadda.

Except it seems rather stage managed to me.

I don't mean that it's set up deliberately, but I do think it's engineered by a collective group think that wanted it to happen.

Look their are more press in the picture than protesters.

When you take a balaclava to protest, clearly you are not thinking about singing John Lennon songs.

Clearly there is no sane person in this picture standing up and saying, "Um like guys, this isn't a political statement, this is just vandalism, why don't we go plant some trees instead".

Everyone wanted this picture to happen. The Press (clearly), the protesters, possibly even the police, although I suspect they'd rather everyone sang John Lennon songs. And hence the situation unfolded where a group in balaclavas lands up holding a monitor outside the RBS, and the press are all ready for the iconic picture.

It's stage managed by some sort of group think.

I have no issue with protesting, although generally I would like it to have a point. I have no idea what they protesters were protesting. You can't protest an concept (like capitalism). Sure the banks all fucked up, but are are they protesting that the G20 trying to stabilise the economy? And how is throwing shit though windows helping?

The May Day (riots), the G20 protests ... it all seems to me that protesting is no longer showing peaceful political decent between elections, but an event to be part of, something to ay you were there, and an excuse to cause violence and vandalism.

Sure the police are going to fuck up. When people take balaclavas with to hide and goad the police, it's going to descend into chaos.

Take John Lennon songs, not balaclavas.

Alternatively titled "Why I am hurty"