Twitter, Monetization and the Third-Party
14 Mar 2011
The key idea here is that Twitter could monetize better using their existing functionality and popularity of using their API. I really think there are a few potential great ideas here. First, twitter could syndicate ads, and rev share. Or even inject ads in tweetstreams if they don’t get adoption. Mildly dickbar, but hey, ya gotta make money. Then offer either clients or users to have a pay (non-ad) version. This could be paid for by the user, app, or a mix. Since most non-official twitter clients tend to already do this, it seems like a no-brainer.
The other revenue stream could be charging for bots. Allow developers to create “bot" accounts and identify them as such, then rate-limit how many tweets they can make, score them for quality, etc. You could charge either per tweet, or a flat monthly fee. Either way, developers would pay since it lets them use a platform they normally wouldn’t to communicate with other users.
I don’t think the “promoted tweets" are all that bad, but if users don’t really use trends, then forcing them to is just unnatural and awkward. There’s definitely going to be friction as twitter tries to figure out a method of monetizing, but I think they could do a better job of listening to their users (including developers), and figuring out what they would be willing to pay for.
gbb:
twiiter monetization developersThere was a quiet fury over the weekend (quiet because the spark was set EOD Friday while all the tech mavens were drunk at SxSW) when Twitter—in its second DickMove-Toward-Monetization™ (the first being the much discussed #dickbar)—announced that 3rd-party client developers could go ahead and fuck off. This infuriated be, as a user, since I hate using Twitter’s site (and Mac app), but adore using their service by means of 3rd-party apps. What’s worse is I’ve been trying to figure out how they’d make money since long before most people had heard of retweets.
When Twitter’s clout began to grow, and non-tech-nerds began to flock to the service to complain about the hoagie they just ate and declare every annoyance FML-worthy, I recall many conversations with fellow start-up tech types that followed the same pattern:
Me: So, Twitter’s getting pretty big…
Them: Yeah, they’re really rockin’ it!
Me: Uh, yeah. But, um, what exactly is their business plan?
Them: Nah, dude, you don’t get it. They’re gonna be huge!
Me: Exactly. I don’t get it. They’ll be huge, but how does that translate into money?
Them: They’ll get so big that, you know… companies will be throwing money at them to be part of the buzz! Plus they have TONS of VC money.
Me: But how? And buzz always dies… how do they plan to survive? Ads? I mean, ads don’t work well with off-site apps feeding off the info.
Them: Nah, man… its… you just don’t get it. It’s all about size and buzz. It works out in the end.
Essentially, that’s about as much sense as anyone ever relayed to me. For a while, I thought I was just stupid—a designer in a tech biz world. I’m not amazing with numbers, but something was missing from the equation.