1. Ads served on pages, even though the vast majority of hard-core Twitterers use a 3rd party app...
2. Premium services for a fee.
Neither sound that appealing, but I could be over-looking something.
Sam Beckwith
· 11 months ago
How about Twitter partnering with a mobile phone operator and giving them exclusive rights to the text message elements of the Twitter service?
Carmen Villadar
· 11 months ago
This might be way off left field but just think about it for a sex .. oops! (freudian slip), I meant 'sec' ...
Companies/Individuals who see a substantial and calculatable (?) profit from using Twitter should give Twitter a % of their revenue *ducks from the virtual fruit and what not being conceivably thrown at me*. Okay, it might wound way off but that is what I believe.
Twitter provided a platform where amazing interactions, deals etc .. take place. We should at least give back. When I make money from my connections on Twitter (and that is NOT why I am on Twitter either), I am certainly going to give back. Yup. You can quote me on that. Carmen Villadar's my name, just watch me!
Cheers!
Drew
· 11 months ago
Another alternative would be to meter the API. Charge a fee to unlock unlimited API requests. Partners like Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, AOL, etc. build Twitter capability into their messenger applications which already serve as ad platforms.
Plus side, instant business model. Negatives, it would kill existing innovative applications like TweetDeck. Realistically though Twitter has nothing to gain financially from turning down such an opportunity to protect TweetDeck et. al. which generate $0 in income for them.
william
· 11 months ago
Hail to the Thieves
Facebook Connect, Google Open Social, and twitter the closed source content trap are all a slap in the face to the Open Principals of the internet.
Any developer and proponent of a truly Open web must take an active roll in pushing for the success of Laconica and OpenID and should not help to extend any closed source application.
Today we have no less than 3 closed source companies in a race to become the "Standard" for holding our Identity and therefore having access to the content that we read and creates. These companies will leverage our content to create revenue; giving nothing back to the content owners or to the community.
Why do developers especially Open Source developers continue to build and extend applications for closed source companies that under mind open source standards and ideals ?
Why do users continue to view giving control of their identity and content to these companies as a win, when in fact the win is clearly on the side of the company that you have allowed to take control of your identity and to generate value and revenue from your content. In return for our compliance we do not even have a right to take our identity and our content where we want.
Open Source developers, please do not write any code to extend the propitiatory services of closed source applications . They are not your "Friend" When you write code for these companies you undermine the integrity of the Open Web.
Craig
· 11 months ago
"They can click over to purchase the product or forward the information to others."
If they want to monetize this, then Twitter should create its own pay-per-click (PPC) scheme. Those messages Dell send out are basically adverts with a link. How is this any different to a standard PPC advert?
Predrag
· 11 months ago
Craig, I fully support your opinion... as I was reading through the post, I was thinking to myself "why not PPC?"
Is tehre something you and me are not taking into account?
Josh
· 11 months ago
I thought the same thing, too. Charge advertisers per tweet. Pay Per Tweet
dumbfounder
· 11 months ago
Convert links to Dell to an affiliate link that earns money for Twitter (if they have a program like that). Maybe that doesn't work for Dell, but would work for several other companies (amazon, itunes). It certainly isn't a killer monetization strategy, but maybe there isn't one killer app, maybe there are just lots of little ones that add up.
Willem Kossen
· 11 months ago
At least some (annoying?) twitter users are monetizing twitter for their own sake with a twitter spamming service called magpie. This service twitters - in the name of it's members - advertisements to their followers which I believe is twam. However, I can't opt out without unfollowing those people (which is a bit drastic, because I was following them for other reasons...)
I agree; the magpie twam is very annoying. There are others exploiting twitter for similar purposes. Unless something is put in place to prevent such exploiting; the whole thing will become completely cluttered with ads and will be no fun at all. I remember chat rooms before they became full of bots; now they're not worth going to. Follow me at http://www.twitter.com/liamalexander
Michael
· 11 months ago
If twitter isn't monetized, are they giving out favours to mashable some other way? I swear twitter is all this blog ever talks about.
Willem Kossen
· 11 months ago
As a frequent visitor I can assure you this blog talks about lots of other things as well.....
Steven Wilson
· 11 months ago
If one took a look at the popular post link or the tag cloud they would see that twitter is not all this blog talks about.I am sure the good people at twitter have some very good ideas in store for monetizing twitter.
gijs bos
· 11 months ago
I wonder how much is actually incremental revenue vs a change of channel (rss/email). My assumption: very little incremental revenue.
Moreover, we're talking Dell revenue here, the nett margin for them is probably very low. So, Twitter wouldn't be able to make loads of money on this either.
Jim Kerr
· 11 months ago
This post illustrates a distinct lack of vision and understanding. Twitter is so much more than a simple communication platform. It has a search element that is much more timely than Google. It is a social network that is more topical than any other, let alone phpBB.
Honestly, in about 2 years, we're going to be thinking of Twitter like Altavista was thinking of Google--How did we miss what now appears to be so obvious?
Willem Kossen
· 11 months ago
that is, if Twitter still exists then. There have been many great ideas that never made it because of the lack of money flowing into, rather than out of the bank accounts of those providing it..... I guess Twitter needs to come up with a way to make some money to make sure it will be here two years from now...
Josh
· 11 months ago
Stan, you say "some sort of decentralization is still the way to go." Could you expand please?
Alexander Kintis
· 10 months ago
Mmm, not very impressed with any of the monetization ideas.
What about...
(a) taking any url submitted and then aliasing it (by making it a tinyurl-type link) which has either a splash page advertisement, or advertisement on the top 80 to 100px of the landing page. Also, only show it in semi-random pattern so users don't get annoyed at an ad every url click. Also, URL CTR is very high. So, I include www.abcdefg.com/hijklmnop.html in my message and twitter aliases it to twitterurl.com/foobar which when clicked shows an advertisement for X seconds or shows an advertisement at the top of the page of the original link.
or maybe
(b) in short, create groups where advertisers pay for the group users to tweet about something where the users get a revshare of the tweet just by posting the tweet and/or affiliate-type sharing where a reader clicks the link in the tweet and like PPC, or impression, or conversion, gets paid. So (example) www.twitter-groups.com (owned by twitter) has a network of individuals looking to make/earn money just by tweeting. Business XYZ signs up on twitter-groups.com so the network of users can tweet about what XYZ wants. XYZ pays twitter-groups.com to do that and the users are inclined to tweet so they can earn extra cash just for tweeting it. Can earn even extra cash if a link is included and reader clicks on the link, and or, reocurring commissions based on conversion of link follow-through. Can maybe even combine first idea (a) with this idea (b).
Alexander Kintis
· 10 months ago
Mmm, not very impressed with any of the monetization ideas.
What about...
(a) taking any url submitted and then aliasing it (by making it a tinyurl-type link) which has either a splash page advertisement, or advertisement on the top 80 to 100px of the landing page. Also, only show it in semi-random pattern so users don't get annoyed at an ad every url click. Also, URL CTR is very high. So, I include www.abcdefg.com/hijklmnop.html in my message and twitter aliases it to twitterurl.com/foobar which when clicked shows an advertisement for X seconds or shows an advertisement at the top of the page of the original link.
or maybe
(b) in short, create groups where advertisers pay for the group users to tweet about something where the users get a revshare of the tweet just by posting the tweet and/or affiliate-type sharing where a reader clicks the link in the tweet and like PPC, or impression, or conversion, gets paid. So (example) www.twitter-groups.com (owned by twitter) has a network of individuals looking to make/earn money just by tweeting. Business XYZ signs up on twitter-groups.com so the network of users can tweet about what XYZ wants. XYZ pays twitter-groups.com to do that and the users are inclined to tweet so they can earn extra cash just for tweeting it. Can earn even extra cash if a link is included and reader clicks on the link, and or, reocurring commissions based on conversion of link follow-through. Can maybe even combine first idea (a) with this idea (b).
Ben O'Connor
· 6 months ago
I don't agree. I think Twitter is doing the right thing, picking a path slowly. Revenue will come. What about it's proposed partnership with Google ?
All Comments
1. Ads served on pages, even though the vast majority of hard-core Twitterers use a 3rd party app...
2. Premium services for a fee.
Neither sound that appealing, but I could be over-looking something.
Companies/Individuals who see a substantial and calculatable (?) profit from using Twitter should give Twitter a % of their revenue *ducks from the virtual fruit and what not being conceivably thrown at me*. Okay, it might wound way off but that is what I believe.
Twitter provided a platform where amazing interactions, deals etc .. take place. We should at least give back. When I make money from my connections on Twitter (and that is NOT why I am on Twitter either), I am certainly going to give back. Yup. You can quote me on that. Carmen Villadar's my name, just watch me!
Cheers!
Plus side, instant business model. Negatives, it would kill existing innovative applications like TweetDeck. Realistically though Twitter has nothing to gain financially from turning down such an opportunity to protect TweetDeck et. al. which generate $0 in income for them.
Facebook Connect, Google Open Social, and twitter the closed source content trap are all a slap in the face to the Open Principals of the internet.
Any developer and proponent of a truly Open web must take an active roll in pushing for the success of Laconica and OpenID and should not help to extend any closed source application.
Today we have no less than 3 closed source companies in a race to become the "Standard" for holding our Identity and therefore having access to the content that we read and creates. These companies will leverage our content to create revenue; giving nothing back to the content owners or to the community.
Why do developers especially Open Source developers continue to build and extend applications for closed source companies that under mind open source standards and ideals ?
Why do users continue to view giving control of their identity and content to these companies as a win, when in fact the win is clearly on the side of the company that you have allowed to take control of your identity and to generate value and revenue from your content. In return for our compliance we do not even have a right to take our identity and our content where we want.
Open Source developers, please do not write any code to extend the propitiatory services of closed source applications . They are not your "Friend" When you write code for these companies you undermine the integrity of the Open Web.
If they want to monetize this, then Twitter should create its own pay-per-click (PPC) scheme. Those messages Dell send out are basically adverts with a link. How is this any different to a standard PPC advert?
Is tehre something you and me are not taking into account?
Follow me at http://twitter.com/wkossen
Follow me at http://www.twitter.com/liamalexander
Moreover, we're talking Dell revenue here, the nett margin for them is probably very low. So, Twitter wouldn't be able to make loads of money on this either.
Honestly, in about 2 years, we're going to be thinking of Twitter like Altavista was thinking of Google--How did we miss what now appears to be so obvious?
What about...
(a) taking any url submitted and then aliasing it (by making it a tinyurl-type link) which has either a splash page advertisement, or advertisement on the top 80 to 100px of the landing page. Also, only show it in semi-random pattern so users don't get annoyed at an ad every url click. Also, URL CTR is very high. So, I include www.abcdefg.com/hijklmnop.html in my message and twitter aliases it to twitterurl.com/foobar which when clicked shows an advertisement for X seconds or shows an advertisement at the top of the page of the original link.
or maybe
(b) in short, create groups where advertisers pay for the group users to tweet about something where the users get a revshare of the tweet just by posting the tweet and/or affiliate-type sharing where a reader clicks the link in the tweet and like PPC, or impression, or conversion, gets paid. So (example) www.twitter-groups.com (owned by twitter) has a network of individuals looking to make/earn money just by tweeting. Business XYZ signs up on twitter-groups.com so the network of users can tweet about what XYZ wants. XYZ pays twitter-groups.com to do that and the users are inclined to tweet so they can earn extra cash just for tweeting it. Can earn even extra cash if a link is included and reader clicks on the link, and or, reocurring commissions based on conversion of link follow-through. Can maybe even combine first idea (a) with this idea (b).
What about...
(a) taking any url submitted and then aliasing it (by making it a tinyurl-type link) which has either a splash page advertisement, or advertisement on the top 80 to 100px of the landing page. Also, only show it in semi-random pattern so users don't get annoyed at an ad every url click. Also, URL CTR is very high. So, I include www.abcdefg.com/hijklmnop.html in my message and twitter aliases it to twitterurl.com/foobar which when clicked shows an advertisement for X seconds or shows an advertisement at the top of the page of the original link.
or maybe
(b) in short, create groups where advertisers pay for the group users to tweet about something where the users get a revshare of the tweet just by posting the tweet and/or affiliate-type sharing where a reader clicks the link in the tweet and like PPC, or impression, or conversion, gets paid. So (example) www.twitter-groups.com (owned by twitter) has a network of individuals looking to make/earn money just by tweeting. Business XYZ signs up on twitter-groups.com so the network of users can tweet about what XYZ wants. XYZ pays twitter-groups.com to do that and the users are inclined to tweet so they can earn extra cash just for tweeting it. Can earn even extra cash if a link is included and reader clicks on the link, and or, reocurring commissions based on conversion of link follow-through. Can maybe even combine first idea (a) with this idea (b).