I spent the last week trying to write a column that proved Twitter wasn't worth $10 billion. Then the facts intervened.

Stubbornly, they arranged themselves into a most unexpected conclusion, one that seems almost blasphemy to type: Twitter has the potential to match some of the money-gushing properties of the Internet's greatest money gusher, Google Inc.

If you watched the Oscars Sunday night, you saw Twitter's raw influence on display as jaunty red carpeters, advertisers and actors gabbed in Twitter's sometimes-obtuse language of hashtags and handles. It was as if the world had folded in on itself