Twitter is everywhere, as I write this blog entry Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) is approaching 2 million followers. @TheEllenShow has moved into 2nd place with 1.6mil and @cnnbrk is in 3rd with 1.5mil followers. According to TweetRush, about 8-9 million Tweets are sent each day.
When I explain Twitter to my family and friends, the question always leads to: “How does Twitter make money?” Currently Twitter is working on managing the user experience, keeping the site up and running and learning how people and companies are using Twitter as it evolves before they announce their revenue model. I must admit, each week I see a new revenue model for Twitter, its overwhelming, so I kind of understand their reasons to not jump to soon.
It doesn’t mean I can’t stick my neck out and write what I would do. So here I go.
#1 – Ask your Followers.
Evan Williams @ev is the CEO of Twitter. My advice is, use Twitter to get advice from your followers. Engage your followers to give you a top ten list on what they would be willing to pay for. You might be surprised by some of answers you get. Sure, you’re going to get a ton of messages from people that want it all FREE. You’ll have to weed out all those responses to get to the really good ideas. If you engage your future customers in developing premium features, they will embrace the change as their own.
#2 – Allow people to opt-in, for an ad a day.
Create categories (Technology, Fashion, Travel, etc…) and allow people to opt-in to get an ad delivered to their Twitter account each day. Label the category, Please support Twitter by opting in to get one ad, per category, each day. If you really want to dial it in, allow people to also opt-in and provide their gender and age. Don’t make this information available via your API. With an estimated 32 million users (CNBC), they could easily become the king of permission based direct mail.
#3 – Advanced Search Options.
Currently, Twitter Search returns results for about 3-4 weeks, then the content disappears. I’m not sure if the content is purged by Twitter or simply not returned in the search results any longer. Businesses would like access to this content to find new customers, see what people are saying about their brands and for market research. You could create a premium service for people who want access to this content. Another premium service could be to allow people to search for content based on a specific date/time range. Search for Obama while he was giving a keynote address is an example of returning relevant results based on a specific event.
#4 – Create a Premium Twitter Platform.
As you come up with new features to add to Twitter, consider adding them to a Premium Account type. Some of the ideas that I’ve kicked around are: Auto Introductions, give me a digest of tweets based on keywords or phrases and allow me to check a box on the people I want to introduce myself to. Allow me to introduce myself to hundreds of people a day and keep track of the people I have already introduced myself to and don’t repeat. Hide @replies and other ideas you’ve come up with. My point is, put all of the new features in the Twitter Premium or Pro version. Give people an upgrade path and let them decide if they need the new features.
#5 – License the API.
License the API and the API key. Twitter has a lot of software companies making apps for Twitter and embedding ads in these apps. Twitter should consider making money from these apps. They should be paid by the cell phone companies to have Twitter added to their phones. Its like Bluetooth. It’s a selling feature and Twitter should benefit.
Those are my top five ideas. Let me know what you think via the feedback link.
…Jim