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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.

 

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog 

Comments

One Response to “Twitter’s Business Model”

  1. Rob La Gesse Says:
    April 26th, 2007 at 12:55 am

    Have you seen the CalcanisCast with Ev? In it Ev says they are actually paying the telcos for the twits. Not a ton, I assume - but they pay the telco - they don’t earn from the telco.

    To me, that would be the first place I went looking for money - Twitter is a gold mine for telcos. Twitter should share in that.

    Beyond that, I really see a limited opportunity for revenue generation. Why? Because it would be too easy for a telco (or someone else) to replicate this. As of now, they could even exploit the Twitter API to promote thier own version of the service.

    I don’t think this is a revenue play business anyway - it’s about building a “buzz”, getting a huge audience, and selling it to someone that can capitalize off the eyeballs (Google?)

  2. Todd Says:
    April 26th, 2007 at 8:45 am

    Seems like earlier, this blog was a bit of a Twitter-hater haven:

    http://www.texasstartupblog.com/2007/03/14/flickr-is-my-twitter/

    http://www.texasstartupblog.com/2007/03/19/on-twitter/

    But now there’s lots of luv for it - what was the reason for the turnaround?

  3. Alexander Muse Says:
    April 26th, 2007 at 9:56 am

    Todd -

    I never really thought of this blog as a Twitter-hater haven. I reviewed both posts you quote and didn’t see the ‘hate’.

    The first post indicated that “flickr is my Twitter”, and said, “I think Twitter can be a useful tool and I will be thinking more about it over the next few weeks. But for now, you can check out my twitters on Flickr…”

    The second post was a quote from Dave Ewalt making fun of people who use Twitter to explain the minutia of their lives (bathroom breaks, diet and so on). I thought it was funny, but certainly did not think of it as hateful.

    At the end of the day, I am not a big Twitter user, but that isn’t the point. Twitter is a huge force in our space and to ignore it is a mistake. I didn’t know anything about Podcasting when we started the Fancast or PodServe project so we jumped headlong into the fray by building an application. We did the same with Egorcast. So why the love? I am not sure I love it…

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