Only a few short weeks ago i discovered twitter, well…i didn’t really discover it, i was led to it and i just had to find out what this thing was all about. I’d being hearing about it for a while on blogs and on podcasts, but didn’t really understand the point of it- Twitter seemed to be just another attempt at a IM with a different take on it, which to be honest it is, but the twist is what makes it so good!
Since beginning in San Francisco in 2006, Twitter has really taken off. They are now sitting at around 5 million users and have been able to raise tens of millions in venture capital… but, Twitter are still left without a revenue based business model, though they now have Kevin Thau that they hired to fill the role of the newly created position of Director of Mobile Business Development, though he will head up all business development for the site.
There are now thousands of apps, sites, blogs and services dedicated to Twitter all over the net, all trying to come up with decent business models themselves to keep alive in this market- mostly through advertising revenue, which at this stage Twitter doesn’t do. Doing a quick search I was able to find a list of over 50 Twitter web services(which only just scratches the surface)- everything from location based searches, RSS feeders, imbedded apps, to trackers and voting apps. It seems Twitter is being used as a platform for other up-starts to make money from. Dell was reported to have made $1 million dollars through its Twitter account, sending out deals for their followers. Twitter seems to be making a lot of money for everyone else except for themselves.
Having someone now head up a division that will hopefully bring in revenue and hopefully help Twitter grow into a bigger better service can only be a plus for us and them. While we wait patiently for that to happen, smaller up-starts and bigger companies will continue to leverage Twitter’s platform for their own benefit and continue to make money using it. It has become a powerful advertising medium and will continue to do so, and has also become a extremely powerful news aggregator. Just look when Google made the entire net bad- most people in the know received the information via Twitter, where-as 2-3 years ago, Google was the go to place for breaking news.
So how will this little messaging platform change the way we do things?? well it’s already starting to…
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