Twitter expect to release analytics dashboard in Q4

We recently saw the announcement of a brand-spanking new design for Twitter. The site redesign is Twitter's way of putting their stamp on the interweb, and simultaneously laying down the challenge to competing developers that twitter.com is the only place to use the popular micro-blogging service. This is bad news for desktop application such as Tweetdeck, Brizzly and Seesmic, just name to name a few.Last year we saw Twitter acquire an analytical company called 'Trendly'. This has allowed Twitter to introduce the 'trending' concept and around December, Twitter hinted that an analytics tool could be introduced in the near future. It seems that future is Q4 2010, according to development team member Ross Hoffman, who confirmed the release date at the Sports Marketing 2.0 Summit. To add spice to the announcement, WebTrends have released further information on the analytics tool:

• Twitter is planning to release a real time analytics dashboard in Q4. Like their releases of ads and the new UI, this will likely start as a beta release and have a phased roll out. Because the conference was a sports marketing conference, Ross said it would be available to that audience, but presumably it will be available to all users.
• The product will leverage algorithms similar to the Twitter Resonance concept in order to show users which tweets are spreading, who is influential in their network, and more. The emphasis is on real time in order to help users make adjustments on the fly to their tactics.
• It is being created by the team Twitter acquired in June, which created Trendly.
• The product will be free.

[via: WebTrends]Good to see this tool will be free for users, very Google Analytics-like of them. There is definitely an opportunity for Twitter to monetize this tool by tailoring it to the business community, offering a more advanced analytical tool for business/corporate accounts. However this is undoubtedly bad news for third-party Twitter-based analytics tools out there, as it seems that Twitter is finally beginning to firm up its web-based strategy, and by the looks of things it has already got some sweating on what else Twitter has up its sleeve.What are your thoughts on this new Twitter announcement? Do you see this tool being the leader in Twitter-centric analytics tools out there, and is this the demise of Klout, Twitterholic, Twitterlyser et al?