Scripting News: Twitter's business model (Scripting News)
Jim Posner
· 2 years ago
Why can't Budweiser or BMW have a twitter channel? I would subscribe if it is funny or useful. Advertising as useful information-just good business. Bud could twitter me a link to a proven chili recipe made with Bud.
mdy
· 2 years ago
Frankly, I've been expecting SMS-based ads from Twitter ever since the first "Tip" text appeared in the SMS tweets. Right now, the "tips" are just short blurbs reminding people of Twitter keywords, but they could easily be replaced by ads in the future.
I personally wouldn't mind if Twitter continued to offer a free service supported by contextually relevant ads (as long as I don't have to *pay* for the ads I receive). They can always offer an ad-free, paid service for folks who hate the ads.
RacerRick
· 2 years ago
It's my understanding that they do pretty well overseas. The mobile companies pay per text message generated. I think it's that way in a few countries, but obviously Twitter generates a lot of texting.
I actually don't mind the Twitter 'tips'. And if you make your Twits the full length... there'd be no room for an ad.
TDavid
· 2 years ago
I'm not sure what's wrong with premium accounts? That is a model that seems to have fallen out of favor but still has relevance and works.
Perhaps ever X number of tweets, those who don't have a 'pro' twitter account would have an ad: link here added as a signature. I think Twitterers would be fine with this assuming they could buy their way out of them, just as you can buy your way out of the photo limits on Flickr.
kosso
· 2 years ago
I think it's so sad that so many sites and systems can't operate on the web without resorting to throwing advertising in people's faces.
I fall in the category of people who hate web ads. especially the big glaring moving ones.
I used to work for an ad agency for 5 years, and learned plenty about brand awareness: just seeing a logo *anywere* is increasing awareness. We are advertised brands every where we look these days. Even looking a tv or computer that is switched off, you're still getting the logo most of the time.
All most web ads do is turn me off the brand. Especially the obnoxious ones.
When I visit a site, I'm there to do something - use their service or consume content - not go off at a tangent, ignoring their content to go shopping!
Sure, we can't get things for 'free' - but it really saddens me how much we rely on ads to fund sites.
No getting away from it I suppose. :(
Ben Hwang
· 2 years ago
You can already send SMS messages to lists of people. All Twitter would need to do is set up their API like Facebook does with SMS. Twitter isn't that much different from SMS anyways considering you can do one-to-many with SMS already.
dahowlett
· 2 years ago
Mobile is OK but what about those of us who use it on our computers? Surely with clients like Snitter, Twitbin etc, there is no removing it? Especially with folk finding ways to use it for business. Or is it all heading back to Skype? (please no!)
rvanderblom
· 2 years ago
They wouldn't actually need to put them up with the twits itself, instead they could offer the information gathered to advertisers which can create a profile. Or you could create some sort of profiling service as most twits are wide in the open.
Then you create a service where you can link all you're site profiles together and voila you're there. In my case it would be rather simple as i never bother to think about a new name for services i use. So then when I would twitter that I'm thinking about getting an internetbunny i've been looking at, they could bombard me with ads about the internetbunny. Though I'm not sure that will be very effective .
There's already a SMS thingy available with twitter. But I've never noticed anybody using it. I like SMS very much, but solely for person to person communication.
William
· 2 years ago
I use SMS with Twitter all the time.
William
· 2 years ago
I am pretty sure they already can do that. I am not so sure Twitter's destiny is to be acquired by a phone company though. I think it is more likely it would be acquired by an advertising network. Something like Dan suggests but not as intrusive.
-William
uberalex
· 2 years ago
Powce seems to have pretty much that business model in mind, though they are independent 'tweets' added to your feed, rather than being attached to the messages themselves. I have a suspicion that actually inlining the ads would be a lot more powerful, but also a lot more annoying. There are competitor services out there to Twitter, but unless they really annoy people, the graph doesn't move.
That said, I am doing what I can to draw people over, because I prefer the Pownce format.
So, what do you think Yahoo! would buy? Twitter or Pownce? ;)
vincentvw
· 2 years ago
Isn't that the current business-model of the free version of Twitterific? Imagine one advert from Twitter and another from the "reader" every once in a while. I don't think it would work.
Seth
· 2 years ago
You could always use Jaiku, though I don't know if the features-set is exactly the same.
Ontario Emperor
· 2 years ago
I'm still thinking that a controlled set of advertisements - say, 1 advertisement for every 100 tweets - would be tolerable. Anything that isn't self-funding is bound to be shut down after disappointing quarterly results. If you're right and Twitter's destiny is to be bought and folded into another service, I suspect that if Phone Company X bought Twitter, then we'd end up with a bunch of small mini-twits.
jon burg
· 2 years ago
I hate to do this, but this is one of those - could have seen this coming moments.
Advertisers are overstepping their boundaries and invading our lives, becoming close talkers. And users are going to get annoyed, resulting in negative sentiment. Way to go!
Rasmus
· 2 years ago
Wonder why Google bought Jaiku? ;)
EwanG
· 2 years ago
I don't know. As I talk about in Introduction to Web 3.0, I think the business models coming up are going to be - of necessity - more varied than what we currently have. for twitter, the value is going to occur not just from following my twitter stream, but being able to see the "conversation" with friends. Only my .02 of course...
All Comments
I personally wouldn't mind if Twitter continued to offer a free service supported by contextually relevant ads (as long as I don't have to *pay* for the ads I receive). They can always offer an ad-free, paid service for folks who hate the ads.
I actually don't mind the Twitter 'tips'. And if you make your Twits the full length... there'd be no room for an ad.
Perhaps ever X number of tweets, those who don't have a 'pro' twitter account would have an ad: link here added as a signature. I think Twitterers would be fine with this assuming they could buy their way out of them, just as you can buy your way out of the photo limits on Flickr.
I fall in the category of people who hate web ads. especially the big glaring moving ones.
I used to work for an ad agency for 5 years, and learned plenty about brand awareness: just seeing a logo *anywere* is increasing awareness. We are advertised brands every where we look these days. Even looking a tv or computer that is switched off, you're still getting the logo most of the time.
All most web ads do is turn me off the brand. Especially the obnoxious ones.
When I visit a site, I'm there to do something - use their service or consume content - not go off at a tangent, ignoring their content to go shopping!
Sure, we can't get things for 'free' - but it really saddens me how much we rely on ads to fund sites.
No getting away from it I suppose. :(
Then you create a service where you can link all you're site profiles together and voila you're there.
In my case it would be rather simple as i never bother to think about a new name for services i use. So then when I would twitter that I'm thinking about getting an internetbunny i've been looking at, they could bombard me with ads about the internetbunny. Though I'm not sure that will be very effective .
There's already a SMS thingy available with twitter. But I've never noticed anybody using it. I like SMS very much, but solely for person to person communication.
-William
That said, I am doing what I can to draw people over, because I prefer the Pownce format.
I posted about this well over a month ago here : http://jburg.typepad.com/future/2007/10/when-yo...
Advertisers are overstepping their boundaries and invading our lives, becoming close talkers. And users are going to get annoyed, resulting in negative sentiment. Way to go!