I have no doubt that they are working on a business model, but it's true, the clock is ticking and they need to step it up.
CannonGod
· 1 year ago
I completely agree Twitter needs to have an interesting model to show to clients and get them excited.
While no UK carrier seems to want to foot the bill entirely, why don't they just go in for a month's worth and use it as an advertising gimmick for their company to show they're 'down wit dem kidz' and social networking. You have Orange offering free access to Facebook, why not free updates from Twitter? Marketed properly this could be good for everyone (Twitter, Phone company, Users).
And if the ultimatum was that you got sent an advert via SMS every 5 updates you receive, would you mind if it allowed the service to run free?
Palin Ningthoujam
· 1 year ago
I think it could be a nice idea. And mobile phone operators today are open to all sort of marketing campaigns and have huge budgets, it might just work.
Nicolai Rygh
· 1 year ago
Maybe their business plan is to grow and grow; until microsoft or google put the cash on the table to buy them?
FiZ
· 1 year ago
Google already owns Jaiku.
Personally, I love the userbase that Twitter has, but if nobody's bought them by this point, they better have something nearly ready to implement. Otherwise, this will just slow the inevitably collapse. I'm interested to see who/what will pick up the slack if that does become the case.
Kurt Henninger
· 1 year ago
I agree that all Internet ventures eventually have to come up with a viable business model, or they will go down the tubes.
Unfortunately, many Internet ventures get started without a viable business model and get lots of traffic, but are never able to capitalize on that traffic without a good model.
Mark Zabala
· 1 year ago
Twitter should just replace the failwhale (which I see all the time anyway) with relevant ads based on the context of a user tweets. It can display the ad based on a keywords that appear in user's last tweet, last few tweet, average of all time tweets, what keywords are appearing in a user's time, and the most popular trending keywords in Summize.
What about via SMS and and Twitter clients? Well, each user can have a mandatory "friend" like Tim on Myspace that will tweet relevant ads based on keywords targeted per user that only tweets in a proportionate ratio to how often a user tweets and their friends tweet so there is a decent signal to noise ratio.
Do I win a prize? =)
Palin Ningthoujam
· 1 year ago
How about charging the application developers? There are so many Twitter applications. But that alone might not suffice. Ads on messages and time lines might be big eyesores.
Nicole Simon
· 1 year ago
The biggest problem I see (at least for the German market): We do not pay for simple SMS receiving, ever. The idea ot get a text message and pay for it is associated with the likes of ringtones and similar.
Also, while DM per SMS is nice (which is the feature I assume most people really use and not having everything delivered to their mobile) it is doable by mobile internet. That could be an angle to work it, but mobile phone providers are not interested in small apps with low footprint, as it does not bring in money.
To give you a reference: I use twitter extensivly through a prepaid data plan when in Germany for 24 Euro cents a mb and made barely 3 megabytes since last christmas. Not much to get there.
Burak
· 1 year ago
They could charge a low-cost subscription fee for power users, with an ad-based model for people who want to follow up to, say, 50 friends for free.
All Comments
While no UK carrier seems to want to foot the bill entirely, why don't they just go in for a month's worth and use it as an advertising gimmick for their company to show they're 'down wit dem kidz' and social networking. You have Orange offering free access to Facebook, why not free updates from Twitter? Marketed properly this could be good for everyone (Twitter, Phone company, Users).
And if the ultimatum was that you got sent an advert via SMS every 5 updates you receive, would you mind if it allowed the service to run free?
Personally, I love the userbase that Twitter has, but if nobody's bought them by this point, they better have something nearly ready to implement. Otherwise, this will just slow the inevitably collapse. I'm interested to see who/what will pick up the slack if that does become the case.
Unfortunately, many Internet ventures get started without a viable business model and get lots of traffic, but are never able to capitalize on that traffic without a good model.
What about via SMS and and Twitter clients? Well, each user can have a mandatory "friend" like Tim on Myspace that will tweet relevant ads based on keywords targeted per user that only tweets in a proportionate ratio to how often a user tweets and their friends tweet so there is a decent signal to noise ratio.
Do I win a prize? =)
Also, while DM per SMS is nice (which is the feature I assume most people really use and not having everything delivered to their mobile) it is doable by mobile internet. That could be an angle to work it, but mobile phone providers are not interested in small apps with low footprint, as it does not bring in money.
To give you a reference: I use twitter extensivly through a prepaid data plan when in Germany for 24 Euro cents a mb and made barely 3 megabytes since last christmas. Not much to get there.