Twitter’s Business Model
April 25, 2007
Since the Big in Japan team built Egorcast I have been playing with Twitter. Without even trying I have 71 friends and 28 followers. Lots of people, besides our own team, have been busy building Twitter mash-ups (click here for a partial list). Why? I don’t really know, perhaps ‘because EVERYONE is doing it?’
David Chartier wrote a post earlier today titled, "Six ways Twitter can make money." He explains that the creators of Twitter are doing a lot of ‘hinting’ about practical uses for the service, but they aren’t saying how they plan to make money. David has a few ideas:
- Twitter Pro (paid service offering more features ~ freemium model)
- Merchandise (Twitter t-shirts?)
- Twitter for Business (a la Google Apps)
- Twitter Forums with tasteful ads
David did talk to Ev who suggested how Obvious might start generating revenue in short order:
- Selling tasteful sponsorships
- Charging companies who use it for marketing or commercial purposes (like MySpace)
It will be interesting to see how Twitter’s business model develops.
