Twitter Making Money

Twitter Making Money

How will Twitter, the popular micro-blog service (among the myriad of technology experience anyway), making money? That is the nice version of the question posed today by Allen Stern at CenterNetworks on his blog. Stern writes: "As the use of Twitter has grown, have f'ed out of a sustainable business model?"

Twitter does not charge for this service, although there may be some costs associated with sending SMS messages (with foot and Twitter users, according to the bill in the country of origin and they are based). Also, Twitter does not (yet) ads - and to make matters worse, many of its regular users access Twitter through third-party clients such as Twitterific, using Twitter's own API.

Stern continues:

Most large users to use the Twitter service via the API and "out". In fact, use the website and update the page every few minutes while I'm at home. How can you monetize the use of the API? If a Twitter user already paid $ 15 for a piece of [third party] software, which will then be willing to pay for your Twitter account? It's like paying for mIRC and then having to pay for the use of IRC itself.

In a funny message on your own blog, Dave Winer responds saying that there is much more difficult problems of this dilemma Web 2.0 (my words not his).

When I was in college, professors used to ask questions that are much more difficult than the question Allen Stern asks in this piece.

The NY Times crossword puzzle is more difficult.

Geez, installing a new hard drive in a MacBook is more difficult, and as I found it very easy.

According to Winer, Twitter has a number of possible business models, all of whom are based in the service of acquiring a user base large enough in the first place.

* Become a distributor of third party applications and services that use Twitter and a cut in return.
* Design and sale of hardware, such as a mobile "Twitter in the oven."
* Or, better yet, associated with mobile device manufacturers and carriers to offer better integration Twitter.
* And finally, selling the service to a carrier.

The first and the third seems the most viable. Twitter creating a stock of goods and services would be similar to the shop selling Skype USB phones and other products that use the Skype API. And the partnership with mobile operators seem a "no brainer" and could provide a way to reduce the costs of SMS. Although, as noted also Winer, make Twitter more stable should be a first priority.

Twitter Making Money