In 2003, John Battelle opined that Google was essentially a “database of intentions“.

The aggregate results of every search ever entered, every result list ever tendered, and every path taken as a result. … a massive database of desires, needs, wants, and likes that can be discovered, supoenaed, archived, tracked, and exploited to all sorts of ends… this artifact can tell us extraordinary things about who we are and what we want as a culture.

That phrase made it into his book “The Search” and quickly became a popular way to demonstrate how enormously important and powerful Google might eventually become.

This last Saturday, the New York Times ran a piece on a possible new monetization idea that Twitter was considering: to “offer shopping advice and easy purchasing”. People already solicit their Twitter followers’ opinions, and it is also already possible to identify real-time trends related to a particular product, company or event. Put those together, and you get an extremely powerful (and, the founder hope, lucrative) tool.

Viewing this piece of news in the context of “database of intentions” you can see how the web has evolved since Battelle propounded that idea:

One, Twittter is now a database of actions, of people announcing by-the-second what they have tried, used, bought, rejected, liked and disliked. I see an attractive opportunity for an analytics firm to help companies make sense of what people are saying about them, what events caused this conversation, and the results of a company’s actions/response on the conversation and subsequent sales/signups.

Two, it is still a database of intentions, but at dizzying, real-time speeds. From the New York Times article:

“Commerce-based search businesses monetize extremely well, and if someone says, ‘What treadmill should I buy?’ you as the treadmill company want to be there,”

While it’s certain that companies can use these intentions to snap up customers before competitors, it’s unclear as yet how companies will be able to scale and respond if and when Twitter achieves Google’s adoptions levels. There is definitely an opportunity for another business here.