Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

It’s certainly worth a lot to Target to be able to send lots of compelling offers to people who say they want to hear offers from Target. However, it is potentially worth much more to Wal-Mart to send messages to people who want to hear from Target. An exclusive arrangement would be one where Target could buy exclusive access to its audience, preventing anyone on a short list of direct rivals from also messaging the chain’s customers.

“There is an interest in trying to convert a brand from one user to another,” Lee said, adding that he “can’t foresee our providing any kind of exclusivity. It’s not fair to the user.”

The current lists are heavily weighted toward consumer brand names. Many retailers may not appear in the lists at all—unless they sponsor—and they could easily appear quite low on the lists. Consumers will have the option of searching names alphabetically, Lee said, which should help.

Given that consumers can easily sign up for the feeds and special offers from any brand, what’s the core reason for consumers to use this app?

The service will offer random deals along with a “trending deals aisle,” which will display “the deals most liked by the members of the community,” Lee said.

There’s also the CRM—or at least the aggregated personal information—implications. “We actually have to collect some information and certainly we’ll compile that information (in aggregate) and make it available to our partners,” Lee said.

Probably the most dangerous aspect of Twitter is its own popularity. Just like the objective of a good Web browser is to deliver the answer to the question posed—with a minimal amount of irrelevant noise—that’s also the challenge for Twitter. The Twitter Commerce offers coming in from favorite retailers will only prove effective as long as there is some strict gatekeeper, some entity making sure that the number of offers is highly limited. Get greedy or permissive, and consumers will get overwhelmed and stop looking—and the value for everyone evaporates.

That discipline is difficult in general, but it’s an order of magnitude more difficult when the gatekeeper in question is a hungry startup with lots of competition. Part of that discipline also means turning down money from willing sponsors. The future of Twitter Commerce will be strongly influenced not by how many people are willing to sign up but by how many underwriters vendors have the discipline to turn away. That’s a heck of a lot of discipline to squeeze into 140 characters.