Not sure about this one, but someone is trying to make money out of Twitter and it is not Twitter. It's a new service called Twittad.
Strangely Twitter hasn't gone down the ad route yet or found another way of monetizing its service, but others seem to be finding ways as services like Twittad launch. You have to wonder Is Twitter ever going to make money out of being Twitter?
The idea behind Twittad pretty simply, it basically allows users of Twitter to earn cash from their followers (sounds sort of messianic and wrong, but really it's all innocent micro blogging ad fun) by placing ads on the user's homepage.
If you have a lot of followers you might make some cash, but I would forget about retiring. So good luck to the likes of tech blogger Robert Scobble who has thousands of followers.
Although it does seem there is at least one mighty flaw in the Twittad system: it relies on people going to your Twitter homepage...and no one ever does that (that I know of that is).The Twitter homepage is not like your Facebook homepage (which I really don't visit all that much either...) as there is no real reason to go there as there is nothing much to do and nothing much to see. It's all part of the stripped down appeal of Twitter in the first place.
So really it's difficult to work out how Twittad is going to make much cash, but someone clearly thinks this is a winning idea as Twittad has two other services snapping at its heels and ready to launch.
There is Twitads and Twitad which are both building business models around Twitter. When is Twitter going to start building a business model around, you know, Twitter?
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Good question, tho I think their business model is "get bought when we start to get bored". Others think peer to peer payments:
www.alleyinsider.com/.../how-twitter-will-be-worth-a-billion-in-a-year
or micropayments:
www.techcrunch.com/.../tipit-lets-you-transfer-money-over-twitter-sort-of
I think I blogged on that Twitter could be worth "a billion in a year". Hilarious. I bet it will sell for not much more and probably less than $150m. So far it is not a service that seems to be anywhere near a tipping point.
Good point Gordon. On a related note does anyone how Facebook's AdWords-a-like is doing revenue wise these days?
Gordon Macmillan
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