One of Twitter’s greatest assets has always been its developer community. But with the countless link, image, and video sharing services available (many of which are very similar to each other), most new services are lost to obscurity. When it comes to determining which services will succeed, the popular Twitter clients hold all the keys. If you’re integrated with one, you’ll be at the fingertips of hundreds of thousands of users who wouldn’t have otherwise known you existed. Getting chosen as an application’s default service can lead to skyrocketing popularity overnight. These Twitter clients are home to some very valuable real estate, and now some of their developers are looking to profit accordingly.
We’ve been hearing from multiple sources that TweetDeck has been toying with charging a fee for services to appear in the popular Twitter client for some time now, so we turned to the company’s founder, Iain Dodsworth, for answers. He says that no services have paid up until this point, but that by the time the next version comes out, that will change. Unsurprisingly, Dodsworth wasn’t willing to go into the details of the arrangements, but we’ve been hearing it will cost services around $50,000 to appear in TweetDeck. We’ve also heard that there might be an extra fee to become a default service, but this information is less concrete.
It also sounds like only some services will be asked to pay to appear in TweetDeck, while others will be included for free, which makes sense. The application would have a hard time omitting a service like TwitPic without raising quite a few eyebrows. But for those link shorteners that are a dime a dozen, particularly the ones that are just getting started, a fee would be much less surprising.
Now, let me be clear: I don’t think there’s anything particularly sinister about this. It’s a natural progression of the Twitter ecosystem. Developers have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise they’re going to be presenting users with an increasingly overwhelming and redundant list of options. So they can either subjectively pick out their favorite services (or perhaps the most popular ones), or they can charge for their spots. In theory they could also allow users to manually specify their own shortener and image sharing services (in the same way you can specify the default search in your web browser), but the number of people who would actually do this would be negligible.
That said, I do have concerns. My biggest issue is that TweetDeck, or any other clients that adopt a similar model, could show favoritism to services that are clearly inferior simply because they have larger pocketbooks. At this point many of these third party services (particularly the URL shorteners) are very similar, so I don’t particularly care if my link goes out through one or the other. But if TweetDeck starts defaulting to a service that isn’t very good, or refuses to integrate an up-and-coming new service that users are clamoring for, then we’re going to have issues.
As for other clients, TweetDeck’s competition has largely avoided the practice of charging for integration. Seesmic Desktop doesn’t do it – in fact, it rotates the default services for each install to maintain neutrality. And Tweetie, the very popular iPhone and native Mac client, doesn’t charge either (though it does generate revenue through premium versions and integrated advertising). But now that the dam is breaking, I suspect we’ll hear about more applications, particularly the free ones, adopting similar pay-to-play models with their integrated third party services.
That TweetDeck is among the first clients to do this isn’t very surprising – it’s the most popular Twitter client, and the company has also raised funding, which means it has to appease investors with some actual revenue. The company has also recently experimented with a branded Blink 182 version of TweetDeck, and Dodsworth says that more revenue streams are on the way.
Update: Dodsworth has sent me the following to clarify his position on adding services, emphasizing the importance of the user experience when it comes to selecting which services qualify:
It is correct that select, commercial, partners are getting integrated into Tweetdeck. TweetDeck is now the leading *client* by a long shot, with around 20% market share and, similar to the browser, we think there might just be a business model in here.
Integration and placement is based on a set of criteria and the experience of our users is always at the foremost of our minds. The user experience of TweetDeck has given us the lead in this market and we are acutely aware that all of the services we integrate need to echo this focus on providing the best possible user experience. Indeed this is why we are looking to integrate additional services as although Twitpic is the current leader their downtime reflects badly on TweetDeck and causes frustration for our users.
We feel its important to provide users with reliable alternatives in all service areas and as a bootstrapped start-up with a small team and limited bandwidth we believe this revenue opportunity can help us to fund our ongoing development and provide our users with the best possible experience.
Was always wondering how that worked.
Many twitter apps out there, so wondered out a select few were integrated with the larger ones. I suppose financially, you’ll take the highest bid. Hopefully they keep in mind UX and potential for an app, rather than just the deep pockets.
Rest assured UX and the value to the user is THE most important thing to us at TweetDeck and comes way before “deep pockets”
Great to hear. The UX in TweetDeck is exceptional, so I assumed it was the cause either way.
to all Twitter services: it is entirely free to be integrated in Seesmic Desktop, just suggest it to http://feedback.seesmic.com and we will go by number of votes from our users.
I might just take you up on that.
Man, Loic is on the ball!
Grats Loic, you have the edge on that.
TweetDeck: There are dozens of really crappy services that can shelf out 50k bucks to be on TD. Or 500k. It doesn’t make them any better. And it doesn’t make TD any better.
Willingness or ability to pay doesn’t equal quality. A good quality services shouldn’t need to pay for integration, as it also adds value to the platform.
Absolutely agree – there is no way we will be integrating services that do not offer utmost value to TweetDeck users be they paid or free inclusion. In many ways those services included represent what we (TweetDeck) class as the “cream of the crop”.
you’re kidding me. You don’t take your stupid feedback forum seriously. You integrate services that we not requested, while neglecting those, which have a strong demand.
seesmic is not a bit better than tweetdeck. At least they’re being honest.
LOL WUT?
Seriously? 50k? Why not just a monthly service fee?
Ridiculous!
TweetDeck is a massive web real estate at the moment. Anyone have an idea about it’s usage stats?
this is a post from back in February. http://www.tech...ng-to-twitstat/
It’s a smart move. If something is valuable you can usually charge for it, and this is massively valuable for 3rd party app developers. There are a lot of users’ eyeballs at stake.
I use TweetDeck and love it. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume the app will remain high quality.
Thanks Justin
Less than 10% of total twitter clients usages (see http://tweetrus...lient/TweetDeck)
Let’s put things straight: tweetdeck has only 6% mrket share of twitter clients, Seesmic Desktop has only 0.38% market share (see http://tweetrus...Seesmic+Desktop)
So both are over hyped, Tweetdeck users send 500k tweets daily, whereas 8mio+ are sent via the web interface.
I guess that’s called “pay to play” This is a good idea for services dying to get into the forefront as I’m sure TweetDeck is receiving hundreds of requests to be included in the app and they don’t have the screen real estate or time to add all of them so setting a fee is a way to generate revenue and weed out some people.
Nothing wrong with that. I don’t use TweetDeck so doesn’t bother me.
We are receiving hundreds of requests for integration/inclusion which is fantastic. Obviously we can’t integrate everything. Do users really want an app with hundreds of options for every element of functionality…I don’t think so. Within TweetDeck we aim to present the best services from which to choose.
To all Twitter clients: It’s entirely free to integrate our set of business tools to your client: poll, events, jobs, coupons, business cards, travel and more to come. Just get in touch with us @ http://twtapps....om/contacts.php
We at Nambu will not be doing this. What we add to Nambu will be for the benefit of the user experience and the platform we are trying to create, nothing more.
but nobody cares about Nambu, stop pretending you are for the user
I actually like Nambu quite a bit.
Nambu > Tweetie
I can’t imagine spending $50K to get placement in a twitter app considering the pace at which they are leapfrogging each other feature-wise. There’s no clear winner. TweetDeck has more users today, but the Twitter app user base is fickle, often changing back and forth from Seesmic and TweetDeck with each new release.
I think the clients should focus on winning the features race and incorporate the most popular 3rd party services. Seesmic’s model of equal distribution is fine, but I doubt if anyone would make a fuss if they just went with the most popular integrations.
There’s no loyalty in the Twitter app space yet. When Tweetie introduces Groups, Seesmic will collect dust on my desktop – until they release something else I want.
Like drag and drop for follow-up and group additions! @loic
Twitter alone should charge TweetDeck 50k per month considering they are what made them popular.
I agree. why doesn’t twitter just start charging all these services that ride on it?
I agree with you about the concern of having inferior products with deeper products integrated, that’s definitely something they’ll need to address. I’m currently liking Seesmic Desktop better than TweetDeck, but that’s mainly because of the facebook integration. What would be the upside of a URL shortener for example to dump $50k to be used inside of TweetDeck. Would they be able to monetize that?
I also fully agree with the concern of having a product full of services that are only there by virtue of “deep pockets” – that will not happen with TweetDeck. We are only integrating those services that provide the greatest value to users and represent the “best in show” in their specific field. I see no value in having a drop-down list of hundreds of url shortening services even if they were all paying.
Or, if URL shorteners want so badly to show up in Tweetdeck, have them conform to a certain spec, leave the marketing to them, and surface an “Add New” option in your UI, to allow users to use whichever service they like — just as IE, Firefox and Chrome do for their search-providers list. Which is nice — it lets me use Chrome, but set Bing as my default search engine. Everybody wins.
I also just wanted to give a shout out to Tweetie which is one of the only reasons I ever even got into Twitter. I wish the Tweetie developer would make a desktop client for Twitter/Facebook and FriendFeed.
Last I checked TweetDeck was a business. Businesses need to create revenue. TweetDeck has created the dominant product in this category. I’d leave it to that team to prioritize revenue creation and balance that with maintaining an excellent product. All these other clients should be congratulating TweetDeck for creating a viable revenue stream in their industry.
Amen to that.
manual trackback: Twitter applications are absolutely free on Seesmic Desktop http://www.loic...utely-free.html
I’m very happy that Iain and TweetDeck are actually finding a way to make money using their service, which is more than the 99% of other companies based on Twitter can say. I also have complete faith that TweetDeck will continue to include use the best services available in each feature category, regardless of their ability to pay. Services that aren’t as good or not as popular still get a chance which is great for them, and TweetDeck gets to make money which it can use to further development to make the experience better for everyone. It’s a win-win.
To not take advantage of this type of revenue stream would be foolish… so not sure what the other twitter clients are thinking here. The best way to serve your users is to make sure you’ll still be around and in business next year and TweetDeck is right on track to make sure it has the best product and a revenue stream to keep it that way.
John – your 2nd paragraph here is so so bang on in every way.
As a business owner, I think it’s a brilliant move on their part. For the end user…. mmm, not so sure. Like the article says, most URL shorteners are the same for all intents and purposes, so it’s probably not a big deal. But if some amazing service comes around that everyone loves bu they have no money so they don’t get included in the most popular twitter client because of that – yeah, that’s lame.
Yes understand the concern – the amazing service that comes along that everyone loves AND provides real value to TweetDeck users would most definitely get included into TweetDeck – no shadow of a doubt.
This is a good argument for various types of services (URL shorteners, photo uploading, etc.) to standardize protocols. It simplifies development, and allows for interfaces that work with any service, including those launched in the future. Users would then have the freedom to use whichever met their needs.
This sucks for startups, like Posterous, who don’t have $50k to throw around at TweetDeck but offer up a great service.
While this will help TweetDecks bottom-line in the short-term, it seems this practice will ultimately harm the choice their users have which could drive them to other Twitter clients that offer up more features & choice.
I for one won’t be using TweetDeck because they don’t integrate with Posterous.
It doesn’t suck for anyone – we’ve been examining how to integrate Posterous for a while now, when we do it it will be done right so as to provide the maximum value to our users – we are not interested in rushing in to integrate a service just because other clients have – where’s the value in that?
Given the Twitter Open API’s, when to monetize is critical. Only large media companies that are “must buys” like Yahoo Reader for Twitter, AOL AIM, Glam’s Tinker.com Trends, Google real time search can sustainably make money today. Jumping into charging too much too early will get other clients like Loic’s Seesmic ahead of you.
If it is cool for users, you need to add it. If it is not, best not to integrate and find other ways of making money. Twitter is open, and you need to be open too.
Maybe Tweetdeck should take a step back, get off their high horse. TweetDeck isn’t the greatest app, I have it because I can’t be bothered to search through the mi rad of other similar and probably better applications – it’s CPU heavy, it leaks memory like a bitch and to be honest the UX can be rather poor sometimes.
TweetDeck uses a free API, gets a Free UserVoice account and gets free Advertisement on the Twitter interface itself. Not to mention that it’s still in Beta – but still, won’t get the moon unless you ask for it, right?
Jake, seriously there’s no high horse here.
I do not think tweetdeck is on a high-horse either, rather the company is being prudent by exploring revenue opportunities.
I wonder how sustainable a business based on twitter is. In many ways that doesn’t matter – making enough money to retire then running is a perfectly legit business plan for many people.
But I can’t help but feel that all this is like making a house out of cards where the mortar is kool-aid. How long will twitter’s popularity last do you think? It’s already seriously waning amongst the digerati (if that counts for anything – which it might not).
Rather than roll-up features via acquisition, they get them to pay to be included… just an innovative start-up positioning towards a liquidation scenario. Bravo!
Is it pay to play? Absolutely. So is being featured on that conference panel, briefing that hot shot analyst, or entering that “innovation summit award”.
Given the hours of work that have no doubt gone in to the product, why wouldn’t they look to monetize it? To those who only require the satisfaction that others are using their product, congratulations as you are achieving your goal – but it shouldn’t be frowned upon when others seek compensation for their efforts.
Given that the Twitter userbase is fickle and the competition plentiful and strong, it would be a suicidal move for TD to prioritise revenue over usability and usefulness, so I’m sure they will look to balance the books without letting the product suffer.
TD is not the perfect client, in my mind there isn’t one (yet). But it’s closer than a lot of others…
Welcome to the real world and the Golden Rule, “He who has the gold, makes the rules.”
What I want from Tweetdeck and/or their competitors is the ability to read an RSS feed in a panel.
When some service is down, I want a dashboard that can scan Twitter for updates, as well as pull in the RSS feeds to threads about the issue.
Or when some news is breaking, scan Twitter while also pulling in filtered RSS feeds from major news sources.
How much work is such an integration?
Does it justify $50,000 ?
Interesting approach from someone too cheap to have an AIR certificate so that users (the people that matter here) feel comfortable installing the software on their computers.
TweetDeck will have a certificate shortly. Delay in adding the certificate is nothing to do with cost (Adobe has been kind enough to offer us and numerous other companies free certificates) and is everything to do with transitioning each user and it’s data over to the new certificate in an efficient manner.
hahahaha… so true.
If this method of revenue generation works to produce more quality, free twitter clients like Tweetdeck then I think that is great for the average user *once* the default service can be changed in the app preferences to one of the users choice that’s maintained across sessions.
These guys need to make money somehow, and it certainly beats having ads in your app/twitter stream.
@iaindodsworth – A service as twitpic provides a real value to tweetdeck. Would you pay $50K to get access to their API?
Don’t expect an answer to that question.
It’s surely an interesting business model to charge companies for you to access their API so that you can add value to your app. Twitter has already hinted that they may charge for API access. Tweetdeck purports to flip that model around and charge the service provider for using their service… mostly in a method that dilutes the main business model for said providers: ads served on page displays.
I believe betaworks has a chunk of bitly, tweedeck and twitter itself (from selling summarize).
I’m guessing some animals are more equal than others.
Do you think we should put a pizza feature on tweetdeck so people can read what http://www.worstpizza.com has said about pizza places? Anyone got $50k they want to spare for this?
50,000 dollars is nothing if you understand the potential and you know what you are doing.
Ian,
You should take a serious look at Tinker.com and add their trends to Tweetdeck. They’ve been reaching out to many Twitter applications, and users like their services.
They just launched Featured Trends- this should be a standard for Tweetdeck client- gives really useful information on the top topics and events people are Twittering about.
Don’t know if they will pay you $50K, but Publishers have made a lot of money from Glam in the past. Definitely the leading Twitter monetization model today.
This just seems like a colossally bad idea.
Can you imagine Microsoft or Google charging bloggers for the privilege of displaying the contents of their RSS feeds in Outlook or Google Reader? Erm, no.
You can’t reasonably sell off the eyeballs of the users of an app that couldn’t have taken more than a week or two to build — not for long, anyway. News of new stuff travels extraordinarily fast in the Twitterverse. Eventually, someone else will come along with another nice Twitter client that does everything yours does plus one little thing, and that’s it — you’re done.
I like Tweetdeck — it’s a nice little app — but there are *lots* of problems with it, some today, some that haven’t been imagined yet, and as more and more people start coming on line, to Twitter and Facebook and Flickr and YouTube and all the rest, those problems are only going to get worse. *That* is the problem to solve. One of them anyway. Populating list boxes? Not the problem to solve. It’s too easy.