“You want to make sure everything you tweet is accurate, honest and useful,” Curry said in an interview. “I’m held to a very high standard, and you need to meet that.”

Curry sets a high-standard each day as host of as NBC’s “Today” show, and when the cameras are off, she maintains her journalism standards when she sends updates on Twitter.

“I don’t want to let people down,” she said. “It’s a lot of responsibility.”

Two years ago at the 140 Characters Conference in New York City, Curry emerged as a social media star because she explained how seriously she approaches each tweet. That won the respect of the crowd and her Twitter following quickly grew from 40,000 to over one million. Curry’s interview with HiAnthony.com took place at last year’s #140conf, as it’s known on Twitter. She will speak again at this year’s 140 Characters Conference, which kicks off June 15 at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan.

Twitter is changing, Curry said, comparing it to the evolution of transportation. “When have generations been able to expereince something, knowing that they’re at the ground stage of something? It’s a rare experience.”

NEW YORK — Jeff Pulver took a few minutes to discuss what to expect at this year’s 140 Characters Conference: New York City. It’s the second annual conference, referred to as #140conf on Twitter. The #140conf tag has been used every day on Twitter since the conference a year ago, Pulver said. Last year’s conference helped propel NBC News journalist Ann Curry (@AnnCurry) from 40,000 followers to over 1 jmillion and also featured Wine Library TV’s Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee). Both Curry and Vaynerchuk are speaking again at this year’s conference. Also speaking at the conference, on April 20 and 21 at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump), Donny Deutsch (@Donny_Deutsch) and MC Hammer (@MCHammer).

“What we’re really looking at is the effects of the real-time Internet on both business and we the people ,” Pulver said during a recent interview at the Roger Smith Hotel (@RSHotel).

“We will be looking at the Haiti disaster,” and topics including media, fashion, music and sports. “The people define the moment,” said Pulver, who runs the conference and is also Vonage’s original founder. “It’s about serendipity. It’s about life.”

I attended last year’s 140 Characters Conference: New York City and connected with many folks there. The interaction at the conference helped me to become more active on Twitter. By the way, Pulver said, March 5 is the last day to get into the conference for $100 for both days. As of March 6, it goes up to $140 for both days. I’ll put the conference registration link here and the schedule link here, because I believe it’s well worth the investment.

Here’s a young man, all of 35, who runs a company that makes no money, telling an old man, 78, who runs companies that have made billions, that he is wrong. But while it’s easy to dismiss Stone’s comments as youthful bravado, I think he’s giving Murdoch some valuable advice.

With gadgets like the Apple (AAPL) iPhone becoming more common, media content is increasingly ubiquitous. And as much as readers may value a good story written by a Wall Street Journal reporter, only a minority is willing to pay for it. That’s the new media reality and the basis of Stone’s criticism.

Murdoch may be counting on people adopting new technology platforms — like newspapers on pocket-sized, flexible plastic that refresh in real-time — slowly, giving him more time to milk existing audiences and infrastructure. But while there will likely always be some readers willing to pay for content, what Stone is saying is that so much information will be available for free that Murdoch will ultimately lose the battle between his pay-for-news and free, advertiser-supported news.

Instead, News Corp. (NWS) “should be looking at this as an opportunity to try something radically different and find out a way to make a ton of money from being radically open rather than some money from being ridiculously closed,” Stone told an audience at an event organized by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts in London, the BBC reported Thursday.

It’s solid advice from Stone, who is figuring out how to turn Twitter into a money-making platform. Murdoch has now admitted some anxiety about the changing media landscape, saying, “We find ourselves in the midst of an information revolution that is both exciting and unsettling.” His comments, reported by Dow Jones Newswires, came in videotaped remarks Thursday.

Maybe Murdoch is right to charge for what he can and make money where he can get it from his news content. But I don’t think so. Demand for free content will eventually overwhelm the supply of people willing to pay for it.

The answer to the first two questions is simple: because Twitter is used to connect with people. Twitter isn’t a magic trick. The magic happens once you’ve used it for awhile. At some point, Twitter users find that opportunities appear, doors open and connections happen — just as they do if you join a church group, a sports team or a networking association. The longer you Tweet and the more involved you become, the wider the tentacles reach.

“What Twitter really represents for some people is legacy,” says Jeff Pulver, who co-founded Vonage and hosts Twitter conferences in cities including Los Angeles, New York and Tel Aviv. “Words, ideas, thoughts are small postcards that people can send to themselves in the future because now there’s a digital trail as to who said what, when and where.”

From that point of view, Twitter is a timeless platform containing a trail of expressions, leaving a path that may help people in the future discover how and why we got there.

What about that third question: Will Twitter survive for five years? That depends on whether Twitter’s co-founders can turn this thought-catching-machine into an cash-creating engine. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in July that Twitter will make money this year and “will continue to add ways to make it more valuable.” If Twitter proves to be profitable, it will likely stick around for years to come. If not, no matter how much folks enjoy using the service, it won’t.

Part of why Twitter works is the charm of its140-character limitation. It forces users to communicate their thoughts succinctly and clearly, while doing it in written form. It doesn’t always work, and when it doesn’t, it can cause misunderstanding and confusion, or worse, no response. (Or even worse, it can be used for no good at all, such as celebrity death hoaxes.) The quality of Twitter relies on the quality of the connections happening on the site.

“It helps people more transparently connect with each other, and companies to more cleanly connect with the customers,” says Dr. Pamela Rutledge, director of Boston-based Media Psychology Research Center. “If people aren’t achieving a quality relationship with others online, they wouldn’t use it, and it wouldn’t work.” Peggy White, publisher of Double X, a webzine spin-off from Slate that focuses on women’s issues, says Twitter and social networking work because they’re improving the quality of relationships and communication both online and off.

In short, Twitter gives people a chance to control their message in a short burst. Once the message is out there, it may take a path not intended by the originator. The beauty of the service is if you let go of controlling the message, you typically discover better or more useful information. It all depends on the users who send Tweets.

“People discover their voice matters,” Pulver says. “When you have a platform that aggregates people making statements, and these statements move to the top in a democratic fashion, that moves markets.”

Love it, hate it or disregard it, that’s why Twitter matters.

Twitter recently redesigned its homepage to show off its real-time search, while Google is working on caffeine, a souped up version of its search engine, which is sporting faster and more relevant search results. Facebook may soon be able to top both products from Google and Twitter, if they successfully blend FriendFeed’s real-time search features.

A core reason Facebook bought FriendFeed is for its talent, including ex-Google (GOOG) engineers, and its ability to help with real-time search. Many, including blogger and FriendFeed advocate Robert Scoble, would argue that FriendFeed does Twitter better than Twitter. Moreover, they bought it for a fraction of what they could have paid for Twitter. All Things Digital’s Kara Swisher wrote that Facebook paid $50 million for Mountain View, California-based FriendFeed and its 12 employees.

“Some might think FriendFeed was a second choice acquisition for Facebook, since the company couldn’t land Twitter last year,” wrote Mashable’s Josh Catone. “But FriendFeed was probably the smarter choice.” Facebook has more than 250 million users. Match that with FriendFeed’s technology and engineers, who are now senior members of the Facebook team, and Twitter has cause to be nervous about a stronger rival in Facebook. The purchase comes as Facebook has been pushing its users to open up their updates to better emulate what Twitter is already doing.

Google has Microsoft (MSFT) and its Bing search engine to content with, plus Twitter’s real-time search engine. Add Facebook to the list of search-wannabes. Search is where the money is online, Google has shown, and the bees are gathering to feast upon the search nest. Searching for what’s next in search? Facebook will soon be part of the Web’s race for a superior real-time search experience.

Other inner teen-voice reactions: So what? Who cares? Saying teens don’t Twitter is like like saying college students don’t have a career or, ‘Gasp, study finds that few under the age of 50 are AARP members.’ It’s a moot point. Teens will use Twitter when they have a reason to use it. Until then, they have MySpace, Facebook and AIM to keep connected with the online world.

Almost all Twitter users have a reason to be there, be it big or small. Because I write about Twitter, folks ask me whether they should join. I tell them, sure, if you have something to say or sell. Most folks on Twitter, in my estimation, are there to promote something. It’s either a product, a service, or themselves.

I’m not being crass. In life, whether we’re cognizant of it or not, we’re always selling ourselves. What comes out of our mouths, put on paper, how we dress, the car we drive, the job we have, the house we live in, all conveys a message about who we are. While not a pleasant thought for many, it’s true.

For those of you who say, I’m not selling myself and I don’t care what people think . . . I get that. That doesn’t mean people aren’t watching. People are assessing, and buying or selling you, based on judgments filtered through their vision of the world. Twitter simply provides an online outlet to what folks are already doing offline.

In my experience, most folks I’ve encountered on Twitter are promoting their product, service, writing or philosophy. Most Tweets can be traced to those four categories. The latter two usually means the person is a published author or wishes to become one, while the first two mean the person hopes you will like them and their entertaining or informative Tweets enough to buy whatever it is they’re selling.

One reason I joined Twitter was to let others there know what I or my colleagues at DailyFinance have written. Otherwise, I use the micro-blogging service to point out articles that other journalists — who I don’t know or work with — are writing. Twitter has also proved useful in making connections and staying in touch with folks I’ve met through Twitter or know professionally. I use Facebook, or send e-mails, to stay in touch with family and longtime pals. I’d argue that most of what many teens post on Facebook would not translate well to Twitter.

The Nielsen study underlines America’s obsession with youth. Since the 1960s, when advertisers came up with the clever (sarcasm) and successful idea of marketing cigarettes to kids, as a culture, we have gravitated toward giving great importance to what teens think is hot, and who or what is the next big thing.

In this case, the next big thing in 2009 turned out to be Twitter. Wait, teens don’t like it? Kids don’t use it? How then has Twitter has become popular? This goes against what has been deemed sacred by marketers and advertisers in the past 50 years. Twitter not being cool with teens is the conclusion of the study by Nielsen’s David Martin and Sue MacDonaold. The translation is, if kids aren’t bonkers about it, it’s doomed to fail.

To be clear: love kids! I have a 2-year-old and another on the way. I have eight nieces and nephews under the age of 25 and we all get along. I’m no curmudgeon. That said, I’m not here to wag a finger and say it’s a shame we don’t value age and wisdom as much as other cultures or the U.S.A. did prior to the 1960s. I’m simply saying how silly it is that we are weighing the opinions of those who have been on earth less than 20 years so heavily.

For example, take Britney Spears, who is 26. How many years ago did she jump the shark? She’s 26 and some marketers might argue, passe. Paris Hilton is 28. Her sex tape is soooo 2004. Julia Roberts and I were born in the same year. She’s 41. ‘Pretty Woman’ came out in 1990, when she was 23. How much more influential is she now than she was 18 years ago? If measured by influence among teens or in the world of pop culture, you might get a negative number on a scale of one to 10.

Teens who don’t use Twitter will use it once they join the workforce or graduate college. They’ll have a reason to use it. They’ll start meeting people and want to keep in touch in a way that doesn’t involve drunk frat party pictures seen on their Facebook or MySpace pages.

So while marketers and, maybe the folks at Twitter, may be alarmed that teens aren’t frantically knocking out 140 Tweets on their iPhones on their way to the movies, I say, give ‘em a few years. Soon they’ll be buying diapers, paying their taxes and credit card bills and Twittering along with the rest of us geriatrics.

“The site is back up, but we are continuing to defend against and recover from this attack,” Twitter wrote on its status update blog after 11 AM EST. “We are defending against a denial-of-service attack.” Even so, over an hour after Twitter said that the site is back up, many folks are still unable to get it working.

As more demand is put on Twitter to keep its site running 24 hours-a-day, seven days a week, its users will become less patient, assuming Twitter had figured out a way to deal with service outages after more than three years of serving its customers. In some ways, the site could be a victim of its own success: Twitter fans may have been more forgiving of outages when the site was thought to be a club of insiders by the early adopters of its technology. As it becomes more popular, however, Twitter may be running out of such goodwill. As it grows to a hoped one billion customers by 2013, users will expect the site to be able to handle such attacks.

Mashable’s Pete Cashmore wrote that Twitter was down because it was “saturated with so many fake requests that the victim is unable to return legitimate ones. Knowing that the cause is a malicious attack does take Twitter off the hook to some degree.”

PCmag.com reported that Facebook was down briefly today at the same time as Twitter, but returned “shortly thereafter.” There were other denial-of-service attacks early this week: on Monday, sites operated by Gawker Media had problems. Allegedly, The Consumerist blog, which is hosted by Gawker Media, also had problems.

Twitter has also been dealing with spammers and technical issues. Last week, the company said some of its newer members were having trouble with their followers. Some were seeing followers dropped without any action on their part. Other Twitter account-holders were unable to have folks sign up and follow them at all.

“This includes seeing empty followers lists and zeroed follower counts,” Twitter wrote on its status blog on July 28. “We’re actively working on this problem and hope to release a fix soon.”

Twitter has not responded to requests from DailyFinance for information regarding last week’s followers problem and details about who might be responsible for today’s attack.

“We’re eager to see if encouraging a sense of wonder and discovery leads to a better first impression of Twitter,” Doug Bowman, creative director at Twitter, wrote in a Tweet and quoting from the company’s blog Tuesday. Earlier in the day, he Tweeted, “Feeling calm before the storm. Except there’s no storm. Only quietly mounting tension and anxiety for what lies ahead.” What lies ahead for Twitter is the lucrative search business.

Google (GOOG) has been raking in the loot since becoming king of search. Being even a court jester in the kingdom of search is miles away for Twitter, but real-time Twitter search has to be worth a few gold coins. And some might argue that real-time search is more relevant as cultures around the globe demand news of the moment. This makes Twitter more valuable, although it seems it’s too late for a tech giant to buy the tech upstart.

More importantly for Twitter, this step lifts the curtain for non-Twitter members to see what’s inside. What used to be a sign-up page for those who weren’t Twitter members at twitter.com now shows a real-time search page listing the most searched Twitter topics. If Google is at all worried about the colorful photos and categories at bing.com, imagine the nervousness about twitter.com’s list of hot weekly and daily topics, and those changing by the moment.

Now those menus are available to folks who go to twitter.com and they don’t have to sign up or be Twitter users to use the search feature. The downside for Twitter users is you can’t see the weekly and monthly listings of the trending topics when you are logged into your account. I’m betting that will change soon.

“Twitter has moved from simple social networking into a new kind of communication and a valuable source of timely information,” Twitter wrote on its blog on Tuesday. And in a likely unintentional nod to Google’s don’t-be-evil motto, Twitter wrote, “Also, it’s fun.”

Twitter is one-upping Google. Folks use Google constantly for search without signing up for a Google membership. Of course, Google has Gmail, Google Docs, iGoogle and other services that Web surfers may sign up for. Twitter did the opposite, which I argue is a better approach. They got millions to sign-up first, and then they opened up the no-membership-required search page. Cleverly done.

And there’s more to come, according to Twitter CEO Evan Williams. In a Tweet Tuesday evening, he thanked his search team for the new front page. “That was buggin’ me,” he wrote. “Onward.”

Hey Google, sounds like there’s more to come. Has Microsoft been distracting you? There’s a new target in town.

“The truth is, we’re not even entering acquisition talks right now because we’re absolutely committed to building value.” Stone said. This comes after co-founder Jack Dorsey told me on June 3 that Twitter would “consider” selling at the right price.

“What he [Dorsey] meant to say was, because we have investors, if there was a very serious offer, you’re irresponsible not to listen,” Stone told DailyFinance. Dorsey is a board member and he expressed what any good company board member should, Stone said, which is, “If an offer captures the perceived upside, then we have fiduciary responsibility to look at it seriously.”

According to TechCrunch, which acquired confidential Twitter documents and published some of the information contained therein last week, Twitter hopes to have one billion users by 2013. Using that as perceived upside, if a company paid $2 a user, based on Twitter hoping to generate $1 per user per year, I’m estimating a minimum $2 billion price tag. Anything less probably wouldn’t fetch the micro-blogging website at this point. Realistically, it would take a higher offer.

Yes, you can argue that Twitter’s not making money. The company appears to mulling over how to turn their growing audience into cash. Last week, Twitter launched a Twitter 101 sub-site to show users how to make money Tweeting, and Stone said the company will make money this year.

Markets, and anything of value, trade on perception. Why does gold trade at more than $900 an ounce and not less than $400 an ounce as it did just five years ago? It’s the same ounce of gold. Weighs the same. Looks the same. Liquidity hasn’t changed much since 2004. It’s about the perceived demand for the value of that ounce.

The value of an ounce of Twitter has gone up considerably since January, when it caught fire on Google Trends, or April, when there were rumors of interest from Google, Microsoft or even Apple. That growing popularity since January? That’s demand. As it grows, so does perceived value and the price it would take to buy Twitter.

What’s changed? Perception. Not much else has changed for Twitter. Same guys running the place. They’ve hired a few more employees, with 55 in all, Stone said and many more users. Whether it was Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT) or Apple (AAPL), a savvy buyer should have pounced when the value was lower. Today, it’s much more. Sure, Twitter’s value could have dropped in recent months and can still drop. But if it doesn’t, they’ve missed out.

It’s too late to buy Twitter. The only companies that could afford the micro-blogger are public, though privately-held Facebook might squeak by too. If they pay too much, their shareholders will revolt. They’ll revolt even more if it takes years to make money with Twitter. As we’re seeing with Google and YouTube or News Corp. (NWS) and MySpace, shareholders get angry when saddled with sexy-named tech darlings that don’t morph into printing presses.

The question for anyone looking at Twitter is: Can they duplicate it? Sure they can. Facebook duplicated MySpace, and some would argue, improved upon it. Aye, but the danger of a tech giant thinking ‘We can come up with our own Twitter-like product at a fraction of what it would cost to buy that company,’ is this: You build it and no one cares. Oh, then you look bad. Worse than if you overpaid for Twitter and it flops. Google built Google Video, which didn’t catch on, so they bought YouTube. Now Hulu may, or may not, be a better YouTube, but at least Google can rival Hulu with YouTube. They wouldn’t be in the fight with Google Video.

Twitter has been too hot for too long for it not to matter. Why is it succeeding? That’s a story for another day. Is it succeeding? Yes. Will someone come along and beat it? Maybe. Probably. Ashton Kutcher, who has the most Twitter followers in the world, said Twitter may eventually be beaten at its own game, at the Fortune conference last week.

But what if no one beats it? What if Google Wave goes the way of Google Video? What if there are too many Twitter users, companies and others rooting for and invested in Twitter? Then the coming Twitter-killer may not be able to succeed.

I believe it’s already too late. Twitter has become a household name. Its “perceived upside,” as Stone called it, makes it too expensive for a Google, Microsoft or Apple to pay without looking like fools to their shareholders. If they dared to put forth an inflated bid, it sounds like Twitter would at least listen. A buyer faces the risk of colossal failure; or if Twitter succeeds, they’ll look like geniuses for catching lightning in a bottle.

So Google or Microsoft or Apple, you have to ask yourself — do you feel lucky?