A couple of weeks ago IAC Chairman and CEO Barry Diller was telling the elite crowd at the Allen & Co. Sun Valley conference that he was “pessimistic about Twitter’s prospects for making money.” A couple of weeks later and he’s singing the same tune, this time to the elite crowd at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Pasadena.
In an interview with Andy Serwer, Diller admitted that he didn’t really understand the service and doesn’t use it himself. He said it was for people who want emote real time information like “I’m going to the doctor now,” “I’ve left the doctor now,” and “I have a cavity,” and that it doesn’t seem like a natural advertising platform. “It’s not exactly for me” he said, “I don’t go to the dentist.”
He does admit that it is a “very strong” real time communication device. But he just can’t get much more excited than that. Maybe he’ll take another look if Twitter ever hits those massive revenue projections.
Full video is below. Sorry for the low quality, Fortune will likely have a clean high definition version soon and I’ll swap it out.
Why are we surprised.. there are idiots everywhere..
lol true there are many twitter haters and non-twitter users out there.
You see, like I say, it not what you know it who you know it not who you know it who know you.
its fun to talk about companies that don’t make any money, its like a charity.
Shoot him!
Reminds me of Ariana Huffington talking about Sarah Palin. She hates, but maybe has a crush on her?? Talks about her every frickin day.
Twitter shouldn’t change into a site where you place ads on it, rather charge companys/people with a certain amount of followers.
I’m sure like you guys said in a past article here said that Twitter brings a lot of traffic for you guys, as it does for many blog sites. If Twitter did end up changing us for a monthly/yearly charge I would pay for it easily.
At times I think to my self how lucky business sites like we are to have twitter and get a large amount of visitors in such a short period of time without even spending a dime.
You could also say that popular blogs like Techcrunch create traffic for Twitter. Matbe it’s Twitter that should be paying? After all, TC, Oprah and Ashton Kutcher had fans/readers before Twitter existed.
Don’t get me wrong that’s true, but we are in the future now, people want to take what they like everywhere they go. For example I can check out the latest post on Tech Crunch thanks to Twitter because as soon as post is made I see it on Twitter, unlike RSS Feeds which takes a bit longer. Twitter also allows us to communicate with our readers, giving the reader a closer feeling towards the site in which they visit daily.
Now lets remove twitter from all these sites? What do you have? The simple blog comments to communicate with your readers and RSS Feeds updating your readers?
Sounds a bit to slow for people these days… making Twitter something that us companies need.
He has a point. I don’t clearly see how twitter or anyone of these social companies will make a decent money. Obvious solution is place an ad. That’s how I would do it and cross my fingers.
Ok, on second thought, cuff him until he admits he is flapping his jowels at half mask and really is clueless AND not really able to discover what twitter can link you tooooooooo….
Well stated!
If he is so clueless, then why does Twitter have no business model? Seems to me, the people at Twitter are clueless, regardless of what you think about the platform.
I actually liked the video and his opinion. I to do not think Twitter is a natural advertising method. At least not yet anyway. Social traffic does not really convert unless you are selling traffic numbers.
Something like a #1 ranking in Google is much better.
I respect Barry Diller almost as much as I do Ken Olsen, but this is cleary a “Snake Oil” mistake for Diller as it was for Olsen
I guess snake oil is beyond th whipper snippers here…
I agree your standpoint Steve !
I can’t really take someone who admits to not using or understanding a service yet bashes it seriously, regardless of if his arguments have merit.
Agreed! “Diller admitted that he didn’t really understand the service and doesn’t use it himself”. Fact is Diller has no need to use it himself (yet!) but his employees do.
Twitter will be more valuable than Ask.com.
who cares about ask.com…
will twitter be more valuable than home shopping, or any of the other internet properties owned/assembled by diller…
doubtful.
you guys drink the kooaid waaaaay too often on this board…
and frankly, diller doesn’t give a f*k what is said on here about him…
he’s too busy making real cash to be bothered…
who cares about ask.com…
will twitter be more valuable than home shopping, or any of the other internet properties owned/assembled by diller…
doubtful.
you guys drink the kooaid waaaaay too often on this board…
and frankly, diller doesn’t give a f*k what is said on here about him…
he’s too busy making real cash to be bothered…
Twitter has been way more valuable than Ask.com for a long time.
When a media behemoth makes a fool of himself, nobody dare say he just did?
I dare.
Interesting article. Twitter holds tons of value for customer acquisition, customer feedback and networking just to name a few. Can Biz, Jack or Ev just give him a demo or some case examples. I don’t really want to hear about tweeting dentists either.
Sounds like when people used to say that email would never take off.
Good catch Mike
You know to think of it the person who said twitter is better without ads is so right. maybe that is the reason for its huge take up by non teenagers.
Frankly ads friggin suck. Thus there has to be a way it is there but not obvious.
None the less twitter is an American hit wonder, thus besides Iran copy cats will steal their lunch.
I mean they are almost dead when you think of it. The young ones will not move unto twitter, and the noise on twitter have yet to have any real or meaningful info. maybe it is simply ahead of its time.
If Barry Diller doesnt get it how many millions of Americans are in the same boat. This is more a failure on Twitter’s part to help educate the value of their svc vs blindly adhering to the misguided mantra of ‘what are you doing.’ If Twitter mgt were more objective and savvy, they would lose that tagline and replace with a more descriptive and compelling tagline such as, ‘what are you thinking’ and come up with a getting started guide for consumers linking them to all the wonderful resouces that is the twitter ‘ecosystem.’
omg
They should hire you immediately to plug the obvious gaps in their leaky plans for revenue and world domination. That suggested change in the tagline is a masterstroke that would undoubtedly allow millions of mouth-breathing cretins to instantly understand Twitter and its value proposition. Kudos to you, my mouth-breathing friend, and if I may be so bold, I would like to subscribe to your internet newsletter.
ok, Mike what’s your take on twitter then? I can’t see them making money in the short or long term. If google can’t make money on youtube then how can twitter expect to? If you want to receive text updates from various news, sports, entertainment and business venues then just visit the respective site and sign up.
Imagine you knew what everyone in the world was talking about.
You couldn’t find some way to extract value from that?
Really?
If you can’t, maybe business isn’t for you.
If by everyone, you mean ~20 MM users. Facebook has a better chance of capturing this type of “world conversation” with their vastly larger userbase.
I don’t know I people want to ruin some good things. Twitter is great and has its own utility, one may use it if he likes else he may ignore it, but what the purpose of saying against it so wrongfully. Really sometime some people sXXX….
I personally think, I good for any website that makes money through advertisement
Twitter has neither a business plan nor future
Agreed. On one side, we have Diller, whose businesses are making millions with solid revenue streams and positive operational free cash flows. On the other side, we have Twitter, which is basically spending millions on server costs each month with no revenue stream. Easy math.
Also, I love it when people say “It’s all about the future.” Yeah right. And the management team at Twitter is basically stupid, reading all these comments so they can come with their business plan.
What a joke.
I don’t like Twitter neither. I have his point
This reminds me of George Bush announcing that he hates eating broccoli. People have different tastes. But the people behind Twitter know what they are doing. Although I think a little more than 140 characters would be better.
Actually,I don not use twitter now! Because it is keep out in china.
There may be value in the real time stream but there is at least equal value in the history that used to be served up by Summize aka search.twitter.com but of late Twitter seems to have lost any history from more than a few weeks back.
I was writing about that just yesterday. A lot of value from twitter came from the collective hive mind that was search. Suddenly past events have just dropped from our collective consciousness.
Check out: http://ekive.bl...-is-broken.html
For their relative sizes, Facebook, Myspace and Youtube do not make much of a profit at all. Myspace and Youtube could not have stood on their own without getting bought out by a bigger media company.
What makes anyone think the Twitter will be any different. Just because something is insanely popular, doesn’t mean it will be a money maker.
Twitter also has very low adoption rates for teens and young adults. They already have a “twitter”, it’s called a “Facebook status”. Don’t mean to be a “twitter-hater”, but I don’t see it having any long-lasting legs.
Regarding Diller’s free content remarks:
A profitable advertising model usually requires limited inventory, this is one thing the internet business models have not adopted. They simply have too much inventory. If you are a content-based site and want to make money, you should only offer one ad impression per pageview or every few pageviews and have media buyers fight over the inventory. Google has made billions from people fighting over inventory.
Regarding NYTimes, the advertising value of their content is not just today’s news or yesterday’s news, it is also last week’s news and last year’s news. It is all the news stories and op-ed peices they have ever written. Creating content costs a lot of money – NYTimes already has a crap load of content and it has already been paid for. I just don’t understand how they cannot be extremely successful in the online world. Again, too much inventory. Solution: reduce inventory.
NYTimes.com will be profitable when they do the following:
Write stories, create content like they are writing for online distribution and not a newspaper.
When they remember that they used to be a newspaper and are now an online content company and design their website accordingly – and not laid out like a newspaper!
Actually, he was quite funny.
There is already so much NOISE in this world with all the other social networks, etc., and the Twitter stream came along and turned the volume up to 10. The noise is so loud in fact that Twitter execs can’t think straight as to just WTF they have because the stream is out of control. Too hard to manage. Time to get the lasso out.
Seems to me that if the data stream is so freakin’ valuable for users and businesses then a simple tiered subscription model is the way to go. That would really test if Twitter is a long term asset. But Twitter needs to hurry.
Facebook could create this same stream instantly with the users they already have and call it Twitface. Of course users would have to opt in. They wouldn’t have to charge individuals a subscription because the FB platform can handle ads just fine. They could also charge brands big money to fish and chum the waters.
In the end, I think Facebook wins. Much more manageable and thought our platform.
Ev and the boys should realize this and sell Twitter now. (Or last month)
There is already so much NOISE in this world with all the other social networks, etc., and the Twitter stream came along and turned the volume up to 10. The noise is so loud in fact that Twitter execs can’t think straight as to just WTF they have because the stream is out of control. Too hard to manage. Time to get the lasso out.
Seems to me that if the data stream is so freakin’ valuable for users and businesses then a simple tiered subscription model is the way to go. That would really test if Twitter is a long term asset. But Twitter needs to hurry.
Facebook could create this same stream instantly with the users they already have and call it Twitface. Of course users would have to opt in. They wouldn’t have to charge individuals a subscription because the FB platform can handle ads just fine. They could also charge brands big money to fish and chum the waters.
In the end, I think Facebook wins. Much more manageable and thought out platform.
Ev and the boys should realize this and sell Twitter now. (Or last month)
Well from a working class background unlike most here but mixing with the type of guys who visit here regular my conclusion is this…..middle class,tech,geek guys all use twitter now when i go to my local pub/bat/social club/football team/work colleagues none of them use it,now that tells me twitter has a limited market abeit a wealthy one and tells me twitter will never be as big as facebook.
Exactly, you need to either live and work in front of a computer screen 247 or have a fancy mobile phone to read all the updates. Its good for advertising and promoting products, sort of like e-mail, but how many potential customers are really waiting by the phone for the next sales deal or product info, and who has a time when most of us have lives and things to do. There has been talk about unplugging and stepping away from the technology.
Twitter.com, as it stands right now, is not a big money maker. Additional features are needed.
He has got a point.
I’m a big fan of Twitter… but, as a product, how do you monetise it?
Revenues from adverts on the web are dropping, so this isn’t necessarily the best way of doing it.
Reselling the service SaaS style as a white label product might have more merit, but even then… who would want it?
Diller admitted that he didn’t really understand the service and collector-solar.com doesn’t use it himself. He said it was for people who want emote real time information like “I’m going to the doctor now,”
I think I’ll go on a show and bash quantum physics now…
I don’t understand it, and don’t use it – but, I don’t see a way to monetize it via ads… therefore, it is destined to fail.