Twitter’s Monetization Strategy

Hi again! I’m back from my whirlwind trip to the south, (or the upper south as some referred to it as), and I’m getting back into the swing of things!

I was on the flight home last night and going through my usual pre- and post-trip blogging workflow practice, and came across and article on CNet about Evan William’s presentation at Web 2.0 recently. While Williams didn’t give a straight answer to The Valley’s biggest question (though, did you really expect he would? He never gives a straight answer, always holding his cards close to his chest): ‘How will you make money??’ Caroline McCarthy reports that Williams gave some strong hint, and that hint didn’t include advertising.

Overall, it’s looking like Twitter is going to look at a corporate model, where companies like Woot and Zappos, who are already using the service, will be charged for a corporate account.

Williams is still maintaining that Twitter is simply a communications channel, and not a community, which still bugs me. I am of the mind that he’s not really seeing the big picture – sure, Twitter may have started out as a simple communications tool, but it’s morphed into something much more.

Twitter could give corporations access to analytics and data unavailable in free Twitter accounts, something that could undoubtedly be enhanced by its acquisition of search app Summize earlier this year. [source]

However Twitter decides they’re going to start making money, I’m thinking that perhaps the sooner they roll out that model, the better, at least so the naysayers and pundits stop speculating, which is resulting in some slightly bad press.