Twitter announced on CNBC yesterday that their plan for monetizing Twitter will start rolling out later this month (I think he meant next month – April).
“We’re actually going to be later this month revealing exactly how we plan to make a sustainable source of income so that we can build a business,” said Stone.
Apparently it won’t be advertising based. It will be something that "…benefits the eco-system". Sounds interesting. It will also benefit all the companies that are building Twitter apps, companies like UberTwitter and TwitPic.
I find it so interesting that many companies like ExecTweets and Mashable with its Twitter Brand Sponsors, have already started making money off of either the Twitter open API or tweets and Twitter traffic. Yet Twitter, valued at around $1B, barely generates any revenue and is a long way from profitability.
I’m very curious to see what business model and monetization tactics they roll out. What are you thoughts on what those tactics might be? I’m hoping whatever it is doesn’t disrupt the natural flow of communications between tweeps…
What are you thoughts on what Twitter’s business model will include?
3 thoughts on “Twitter Announces Business Model”
Twitter has had a long time to develop a perfect monetization method, unlike Facebook which did the trial and error. I think they will be able to roll out monetization without people getting mad.
Cheers!
Collin – CEO uber link building
That’s why I’m so curious. Aside from some form of advertising or a premium (corporate) account for $XX/month what else is there. Even the many platform developers like Invoke (Hootsuite) etc make me wonder how they intend to make money.
This from the Hootsuite FAQ page is pretty clear:
HootSuite is currently free. We are currently investigating pricing plans and exciting new features for paid accounts.
I don’t want to be negative, but the vagueness of Stone’s comments don’t inspire confidence. If it’s not ad-based, doesn’t it have to be cash? No investor will fund a business forever with no returns. Something has to give.