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Will Twitter Be Able To Monetize?

Submitted by Jeff Weisbein on September 9, 2008 – 6:56 PMComments
Will Twitter Be Able To Monetize?

Twitter the micro blogging platform founded in 2006 and recently became popular in mid-late 2007 is now faced with a very big problem – how can they monetize their site? Clearly, they can’t run on venture capital forever, but what can they do? Should they do what Pownce does and put ads in users Twitter feeds or have pro accounts? Would users let that happen after being spoiled for so long? Would they leave and go elsewhere?

They recently had to cut text messages in the UK due the price. Obviously they realize money is an issue, but what are they to do? It seems like a very difficult position to be in. In addition, they recently limited the number of people you can follow (now you can only follow 2000 people) – no doubt for scalability reasons. This also caused a ruckus, however, traffic is still going up and people are still tweeting.

Typically when a company has so many problems people jump ship, not so with Twitter it seems. Instead people are still using the service, but why? Does it provide an invaluable resource to some people by allowing them to reach large audiences with a few key strokes (140 to be exact) and a mouse click? Perhaps that’s it.

Should Twitter implement ads into user feeds or should it charge business users/people who have mass followings? I’d have to say the first is a better option, you start charging people who bring you the most traffic, they will just take their following elsewhere. Or maybe there is a better option out there?

What’s Twitter to do? Leave a comment.

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  • Well Jeff, I am not sure if you have had this happen before, but some companies have a word on "alert." When someone types about that word (normally the name of a business) in a tweet, the company is alerted. They can make an action in an @ message to the user.

    For instance, recently, I tweeted about having issues with You tube and Firefox, and Firefox Answers @ messaged me back and told me what I could do to fix my problem. http://twitter.com/firefox_answers/statuses/914...

    I think that if Twitter charged for a company to do this, it would raise a lot of money, as well as make twitter a more informative place. I also think with Twitter coming more and more popular companies will be much for inclined to do this. Win, Win- situation.

    Love you blog,

    Blaze
  • @Blaze: Excellent! That is something I never fully considered, you're right about it though. Very good thinking.
  • i reckon a delicate dusting of ads would be ok with most people

    surely the best thing about twitter is the number of people using it
    i dont think people would pay for some sort of premium service, it would just start a mass evacuation
  • @Blaze: that's brilliant
  • Perhaps they will start to use some sort of credit based system? Having PRO accounts is for me the best idea.

    It all comes down to this: How much are you willing to pay to use Twitter?

    Regards,
    Jason
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