I caught up with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone today on video at the AllThingsD conference to ask him what business models might emerge for the company. In the video above, he talks about different things Twitter can do to help marketers connect with consumers, such as selling verified accounts (something he mentioned onstage last night). But there is is a broader approach which he also hinted at last night:
There’s a way to make introductions to people, to tell them that things and people are available on Twitter, and there’s certainly money in that.
Making introductions is one way to put it. Selling followers is another.
But how could Twitter sell followers in a socially acceptable way? Here is one idea: Twitter already has a spot where it is testing what amounts to house ads for third-party Twitter apps and services.
What if it started using those spots instead to promote corporate accounts? It could get paid for every user who decides to follow a certain company’s Twitter account on a cost-per-action (CPA) basis. The action, in this case, would be following the account. Twitter would get paid for each follower it delivers. I put this suggestion to Stone towards the end of the video. Stone doesn’t dismiss it offhand. He says that it is an “interesting” idea and that the company is leaving the door open to approaches like that. The key would be to present sponsored accounts that a person has a greater chance of actually being interested in, perhaps based on an analysis of topics a person tweets about, links they retweet, or the interest of the people they follow.
In the second part of the interview (below) we talk about how to manage the endless stream of information that Twitter throws at its users. He says that real-time might be over-rated and that new ways of filtering Twitter are needed. I also ask him about the growth of microsyntax and how Twitter decides to incorporate things like @replies as features. He says that retweets and hashtags might be the next conventions to become baked into Twitter proper somehow.
how much did the 4 seasons pay to get their coffee cup shown on the video! Shoot had I known, I would have given him a http://www.worstpizza.com shirt!
Biz & Evan are getting so much attention, maybe that’s how they should monetize…;)
I agree that corporate accounts is the only way for them to go, but don’t you think that openly commercializing the platform devalues it?
I mean isn’t a portion of the value of twitter derived from the authenticity of user relationships?
Isn’t that the beauty of Publish-Subscribe? You do not have to follow.
Schonfeld: No mention of Stone’s direct discussion about providing location-based metadata?
They must to find way to monetize, if they don’t – platform will die
I also think that paid corporate account are one of the choises, but maybe they should think about monetizing search.twitter.com?
who woulda thunk….twitter with a business model..LOL
Those guys are sharp they’ll figure out the right monetization method.
Filters, Groups, RT + Hashtags… all features that twitter should be able to implement within a years time. Why with so much talent (and the ability to get talent from Google / FB / other sources) is it not able to crank out features similar to Gmail Labs?
If and when they figure that out and start getting the Web version of twitter equal to the top Twitter clients being used is when Twitter will be able to monetize whether it be ads, suggestions or otherwise.
Check out twibeo.com The FriendFeed and Twitter combo. Twitter’s simpliciyt with FriendFeed’s multimedia sharing
http://www.twibeo.com
If not figuredout soon the next shiny thing will make them obsolete
One day we’re going to look back at the concept of build the burn rate first, hope for revenues later by soliciting ideas from your users, is a form of FAIL.
sounds rife for fake accounts to be set up to charge competitors ‘following’ though (like click fraud)
facebook needs to get some pointers also…. O_o;;
a good domain name can make or break a company. where would myspace be if it was called bobble. or where would facebook be if it was called jaxtr? twitter is cool name for chimp chatter. twitter as a search engine? weak. twitter is one of the weakest most craziest over hyped sites in the history of the net. crazy is working for twitter. crazy can be a good thing.
CrazyLocator.com – nothing normal
I still strongly believe they can monetize on domain names, not so much as one, like Twitter.com, but everyone elses.
Give businesses a way to register there domain name as there user name for a nominal fee and you have just killed all of the fakes and made money in the process.
http://snipr.com/iwwta
Funny these types of videos about up and coming things always say something without saying anything. Someone should spoof it by asking “what can you tell us about your up and coming product features?” and the person representing the company says “nothing.” and the curtain comes down. Sure, it wouldn’t be an interesting video but it would be more realistic.
It sounds like they really don’t have any firm future direction in terms of monetization. I also found it surprising to hear him say they don’t have the resources yet to build certain features – why not? It’s not like they don’t have $ (that is a resource, right?) – what are they waiting for exactly?
Twitter has real-time search in it. That’s a great value proposition and a great money fetching strategy. Google has already proved that business model. So, why bother? Just go do the really good real-time search engine or acquire some existing real-time search engines like http://www.boilingpage.com and start making money.
It’s not really “real-time search” as in, a real-time search engine. It’s a real-time search of tweets on the domain name twitter.com. Big difference.
The “verified” accounts thing just doesn’t seem all that promising. How much can they really make ppl pay for these accounts??
Personally, I think twitter is just gonna end up trying to do what Facebook has ended up doing: put up ads on each page and pray for a clickthrough rate higher than facebook’s abysmal .04% clickthrough rate.
Selling followers, yeah. That’s not a horrible business model killer at all..
T-minus 6 months to the first ‘Twam’ lawsuit?
Twitter has grown. Now it’s time to monetize! {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/RHuTXB0Q4v_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”Twitter has grown. Now it’s time to monetize! ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/ZiMT5E12s0″}}}
i think over the next year we will see a much bigger battle between facebook and twitter – and i think twitter will win. Facebook will become the new homepage / default profile and twitter will be the stream of information.
Celebs are on twitter but that does not mean the end as many are saying – there are now so many non-techies joining that they NEED something/someone to push them to use it more be it their fav celeb or their favourite company i.e. some fast food franchise, airline or television channel.
How about the ability to have users follow you and not have your account count towards the twitter follow limits?
where do all these douchebags come from?
So I have been using twitter to promote a business and I am finding the site to be extremely slow. Pages don’t load fast, sometimes if at all. It’s frustrating to use twitter b/c of this.
Does anyone else find this to occur?
Selling verified accounts will bring in tens perhaps even a hundred thousand dollars a year. Celebs/corporations have are not losing sleep over this.
Agree with Sean, even status updates will be through twitter, as you can currently update both with tools like seesmic.
I think the issue Twitter has is that people pump a lot of value (content) into the beast, but little value comes out of the beast… and so I don’t see how you monetize little or no value.
so is twitter really gonna make money ?
There are a lot more possibilities with monetizing Twitter than there are with Facebook.
Twitter could go the corporate license route, create an enterprise solution, partner with 3rd-party devs, license to commercial sites, etc, etc…
I went out with a business model once, she was too high maintenance, always on at me to get a better job, ’support your family Joe!’ If they really want models maybe they should release a rap song!!
Dudes I hate all the twitter news, but I think that twitter has almost become a replacement for email and search engines… So twitter will be magically profitable in 5 years or they will be a Epic Grand Tumor FAIL!
I laugh at your conversation about making money. That’s what a business is *supposed* to do…
Take my company, for example…
LOL
He’s a bit boring, isn’t he?
I think currently they ´don´t know the real value of their data! But I am sure they are digging though it, to get ideas! Just the domain model is to plain. Charge 2 bucks per months is easy but not that scaleable ! I am sure there is not more than 20 % companies on Twitter
i like twitter but these guys don’t seem that smart. Sounds more like they probably have smart guys working for them and they’re just the frontmen.
For the love of God, enough with the baking metaphors.
Biz sounded a bit unsure in those videos. No real plans, nothing compelling to speak of. Normally when you have some grand plans up your sleeve, you’re excited to tell everyone. He was like – well, what are we gonna do next?
Wow. I’ve heard Biz is pretty distant from Twitter, but this video proves that fact in spades. They need to put a leash on him.
@clatko
Awesome. Another twitter article. Can’t get enough of these.
Roll out “featured users” already! It’s money in the bank! {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/38GUIvVVHi_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”Roll out “featured users” already! It’s money in the bank! ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/tKtvFmVQWF”}}}
It is SO damn easy to monetize twitter.
People are ALWAYS looking for deals, offers, and anything that’ll give them some more stuff for less money than they pay currently.
Simply have corporate accounts. Charge the corporations for each follower. In turn, the corporation can advertise their latest offers. Any time a visitor buys anything from the corporation through the Twitter link, Twitter gets a cut.
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