So someone tells you they’re going to change the web.  They’re going to index Twitter, make it searchable and sell paid search placements around it.  Nice thoughts but with something like 49 out of 50 startups failing, do they have a chance?  With Bill Gross, the man who, for all intents and purposes, invented search engine marketing, is the guy behind this new venture – it looks better than 50/50.

TechCrunch covered the news yesterday.  The site is still in very early format, but the questions around this new platform are more far reaching than just the site or service itself.  For instance, this gives publishers the ability to monetize it’s Twitter feeds but automatically starts them out at a 50/50 rev share split, relegating them to the land of adsense and unsold inventory prices.  Sure, the prices may start out high, but just like mobile used to be unavailable under $20 but now can be purchased much more inexpensively, these prices too will self-regulate once the novelty wears off.

Second, Google didn’t come up with this. Surely they’re watching closely and surely they wouldn’t hesitate to acquire this company or whichever company ends up succeeding in this space. But would the FCC let that go through?  The “Google monopoly” label is floating around in many corners right now and this might be a deal that tips the scale.  Next, if TweetUp can do it, why can’t someone else wait, watch what mistakes are made, and roll out a copycat version with all the fixes?  This is a proven trend in Silicon Valley – anyone remember AltaVista, Friendster, Palm PDAs (BlackBerry and Apple currently own this slot) and Tivo?

This will be one to watch closely, but more important to watch will be what flaws advertisers and their agencies experience, and whether other startups form to patch those flaws for TweetUp, or instead choose to launch their own service and compete.

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