Updated on 17 November 2009

by Channel 4 News

Avid tweeter Stephen Fry leads the speaker line-up at the first 140 Character Twitter conference in the UK.

Fry, who has almost 1 million twitter followers, will take to the stage at the conference, being held at the O2 Indigo in London, from 9.30am. On the agenda is anything from business, life, communications and twitter itself.

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Jeffrey Pulver, a co founder of the telecom company vonage and early investor in twitter, said: “At the #140conf events, we look at twitter as a platform and as a language we speak. Discussions will be on the effects of twitter on topics ranging from public safety to public diplomacy.”

Two-day versions of the conference have already taken place in Los Angeles and new York. London’s event will feature over 50 speakers in 35 sessions between 9am and 6pm.

Earlier this month, Stephen Fry indicated he might leave the micro-blogging site after being branded “boring” by another user. He later changed his mind.

The actor and writer wrote: “Think I may have to give up on Twitter. Too much aggression and unkindness around.”

Another tweeter said he “admired and adored” Fry but found his tweets “a bit… boring… (sorry Stephen)”.

Fry replied: “You’ve convinced me. I’m obviously not good enough. I retire from Twitter henceforward. Bye everyone.”

He later wrote: “Well maybe I’ll see how I feel in a few days.”

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“Twitter is worth more than a billion dollars,” insists Ron Conway. Conway, a Twitter investor and board member, Spark Capital’s Bijan Sabet and StockTwits backer Howard Lindzon dug into Twitter’s sky-high valuation during the 140Conf today. They also offered up predictions for where we’ll see the next wave of Twitter-related investments and acquisitions over the next six months:

—Is Twitter still interested in buying account management service CoTweet? Leaked internal documents showed that Twitter was doing due diligence for a potential CoTweet acquisition. “CoTweet just raised money—and I’m an investor—so obviously an acquisition didn’t happen,” Conway said. “CoTweet is pursuing an independent career now.”

—Extremely bullish on real-time search: “Real-time search will evolve into a multi-billion dollar opportunity,” Conway said. “The startups like OneRiot, CrowdEye and Scoopler are at the forefront, but I think we’ll see five really good companies emerge in the space that will validate it as well.” Conway added that he’d invested in a stealthy N.Y.-based startup that would monetize both Twitter’s new list features and real-time search.

—Twitter for finance: “Forget about going backstage at the Oscars or The Tonight Show; people need to get serious about the real changes we can make with Twitter,” Lindzon said. “CNBC has had the same 10 people talking about finance for the last decade – and clearly none of them know what they’re talking about. The next expert for investing in agriculture is probably sitting at home, with a real handle on how grain is going to trade; getting his commentary out through StockTwits – that’s the kind of democratization that Twitter is bringing to communication.”

—What are the most monetizable Twitter apps/clients? “I’ve tried half a dozen on the iPhone and some on the Blackberry, but I’m interested in apps that do more than just provide Twitter access,” Sabet said. “I think we’ll see much more interest in content curation and discovery apps that work with Twitter.”

Posted In: Money, M&A & Venture Capital, Venture Capital, Social Media, , ron conway, twitter

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