Twitter Does Not Have a Revenue Plan? Think Again
4 Comments Published by Rodney Rumford December 17th, 2008 in social networks, twitter.
Twitter Does Not Have a Revenue Plan? Think Again. I normally don’t go down the rabbit hole on these topics; but I will touch on this issue as I think it has some merit and will hopefully stop some of the rumor mongering.
First: Twitter is run by some smart guys
Second: Their seasoned investors invested because they expect a return & are giving them guidance
Third: They were in discussions with Faceboook and that went away (if they wanted to cash out with a 6-20X return, they would have come to terms)
Fourth: Twitter is starting to make it into mainstream edge culture and is amassing some impressive usage stats and engagement numbers that most web properties would kill for.
Fifth: It is a new form of communication/consumption and those simply do not go away.
Sixth: There are ways that twitter is planning for monetization opportunities/experements
Seventh: Twitter is hiring their First Biz Dev Person, so they are just getting around to execution in the monetization area
Without me giving away all my ideas for free to the world; I see several potentially strong pathways for monetization for twitter. They will be working through their ideas and have some fumbles, first downs and touchdowns I am sure as they play through the monetization phase of their game plan. Do a SWOT Analysis on twitter and you will come away with some good ideas of where they might be moving. Let’s keep some perspective and remember that it took Google many more years to make money than twitter has existed.
The bottom line for now is that brands, businesses and individuals have an opportunity to grow their users, engage and increase their reach and move the marketing and branding meter for effectively no cost for now.
Additionally twitter is actually hiring for a Product Manager focused on new revenue generating products: Here are some of the details.
“As Twitter’s first product manager focused on revenue generation, you will play a defining role in the formulation of Twitter’s business. Your job will be to lead the definition and execution of the products and features that will lead to monetization of the Twitter platform.”
Responsibilities
* Define products and feature sets of commercial-oriented Twitter applications
* Manage the prioritization and development of new products and features
* Work closely with engineering to develop product functionality
* Work closely with customer support to solve issues and maximize user satisfaction
* Do customer research to inform product decisions
* Create detailed cost and revenue models
* Define product positioning and marketing plans
* Analyze and report product success
4 Responses to “Twitter Does Not Have a Revenue Plan? Think Again”
- 1 Pingback on Dec 19th, 2008 at 1:10 am
I did some strategic analysis on Twitter’s possibilities for monetization a few weeks back, actually. I didn’t run a SWOT, but went with quick scenario planning and Porter’s 5 Forces this time.
My biggest takeaway was that they don’t have this battle won yet, and they have to make some great strategic decisions going forward to prevent copycats from pushing in and ruining their chances at profitability.
See more here: http://www.chriszach.com/2008/12/06/will-facebook-acquire-twitter-already/
I was just writing about the aweber/twitter integration so going to include this as it is relevant.
I never doubted that the day would come when they monetize twitter. How many of us have not monetized a site in the first few months. Twitter had no idea before how big they were going to become. As of today, they are very nearly under the 500 mark according to alexa.
Business is money and twitter is a business like any other. They took a risk, now they want a return. Wouldn’t you?
I’m curious to see how Twitter will monetize its web traffic. There just no way with that many eyeballs I won’t see ads in tweets. I’m sure they have had advertisers knocking but aren’t sure the best way to get them placed in. Then will ads turn off tweeters that aren’t used to seeing them.