In the Twitter founder’s interview highlighted yesterday by John Furrier Biz Stone uttered an important phrase “structured intent.” As far as I can tell from web research its not part of the existing parlance of web strategy, but it ought to be starting now. I will explain in a moment, but first the full quote:

“When there’s a structured intent, like, “This is what I’m looking for,” there’s a great opportunity to make introductions, “You are looking for this. Did you know that this is also on Twitter? Or that you can follow this account on Twitter?” … So there’s a huge amount of opportunity in the idea of making introductions, and like Ev said, creating more opportunities for discovery, and certainly, there’s probably money there.”

First, this seems to be patently their long term monetization strategy for their site. Biz got a subtle and wry smile when he said “structured intent,” clearly it was a concept he’d be rolling around, perfecting and focusing on as they planned next steps. Sure they may very well do TV shows and premium subscriptions, but this is the core strategy. That’s my take.

Second, this is an important term to use more broadly when examining monetization problems across all of social media. The failing of Facebook’s monetization strategy so far, and perhaps why they’ve needed heavy capital injections to power their infrastructure build out, has been a complete lack of a ‘structured intent’ relationship between user actions and their advertising.

Third, its not really new, its the core of Google’s biggest profits, contextual advertising. Its obvious, but somehow not often discussed. Google is rich because they know when you are researching life insurance and supply your structured intent with qualified vendors; Facebook is not as rich because they know you  just poked someone for the fifth time today, and its less obvious how to insert a commercial outcome there. Structured intent will become bigger than mere keyword context advertising; it will take into account more inputs from a users Twitter behavior. 

You could also make a distinction between permission or interruption advertising here, but with Biz coining his own term I say let the bandwagon begin. Its a compact phrase to describe the commercial magic of knowing exactly what someone is thinking about and looking for in a given moment.

Imagine what it could be worth if someone is searching for the best twitter feed on ‘private wealth management,’ and you are the service that matches them with the resource.