An Entrepreneur Reaps the Reward of Twollow Purchase

Numerous tools exist to try and streamline a user’s interaction with the highly successful Twitter social media site. Some applications are better than others, some are intended for purely social purposes and some to try and make sense out of Twitter’s suitability for business purposes. A Canadian programmer came up with the idea for a keyword tracking application, which was named Twollow. The application allowed users to automatically follow anyone who posted a message, also known as a “tweet”, featuring a specific keyword. In other words, if your business interests, as dictated by the particular keyword, were being discussed or tweeted, you would want to know about it and would automatically be “brought into the loop” by the app.

As Twitter seems to be blazing its own trail and creating its own social media phenomenon, all forward thinking business owners are trying to understand the implications for their own operations. Many millions of dollars are spent on an annual basis trying to track and capitalize upon keyword interaction within the Internet as a whole, as companies try to rank efficiently. It seems only logical that, as Twitter explodes, keyword tools such as Twollow would represent a good investment.

This is exactly what Steve Mallett thought when his Inevitable Corporation purchased the application. “I just recognized it as a great leapfrog into Web services and we were always interested in diversifying,” he is reported as saying by the Telegraph–Journal, out of New Brunswick. From a free service, Mallett initiated a payment structure and added a couple of features, such as an “auto unfollow,” which removes someone who does not interact.

It appears that Mallett’s latest purchase has been successful as the user base has increased fivefold. It strikes him as logical that people want to see what others are saying about their target keyword, product, service or company, allowing engagement for best effect. He maintains that his service is based purely on this ability to allow one-on-one interaction, rather than just as a means to spam or sell any service related to a keyword, which is not allowed. In his eyes he is “helping people maintain their reputations.”

Mallett has enjoyed significant success on the Internet to date, through a high-tech news site which he has maintained since 2001. His open source directory allowed him to become a web business consultant full-time and opened the doors to options such as this.

Do you Twollow any keywords?

Adam Toren