In the wake of what people are calling the ‘mainstreaming’ (is that a word? better ‘mainstreamisation’) of twitter – Stephen Fry’s appearance on @wossy’s popular talk show – it draws ever closer to the moment that all social media start-ups inevitably; the ‘how the *!@£ do we make money out of it’ stage.
In an ideal social media world, of course, this moment would never occur and we could continue having fun in our ‘web 2.0topia’. But this is the real world and when something becomes a big success, founders inevitably want something for their hard work and rightly so. And so, the twitter founders crawl away from their computers after however many million tweets, and start looking for their holy grail – how to make millions from 140 word messages…
I say this stage is approaching, but the truth is that the wheels are already in motion with last week/month’s hiring of the first commercial twitter employee Kevin Thau. Interestingly though, it seems the founders aren’t in it for the quick buck after turning down a reported $500m purchase approach from Facebook late last year. Perhaps the contract was too restrictive in terms of future profits for them to accept, or perhaps they’re still loathe to see their grassroots social media site become another lumbering web 2.0 behemoth and all the restrictions that come with it – we can only guess. Either way, they’re sure to be planning something and it’s not likely to be long ‘til users find out what this is.
As is usual in these cases, if twitter does bow to a takeover eventually or continues to seek market-based funding for organic growth, it all comes down to how the thing is going to make money. How they do this is of course, the million/billion dollar question.
But there are a few things that need to be worked out beforehand to make sure any roll-out goes smoothly and avoid the frosty reception received by Facebook’s Beacon system:
· The technology – Drew Benvie of Hotwire commented on the latest failure of twitter to cope with big peaks in demand. Not counting on the weight of British support on twitter, they were not awake to the inevitable usage peak that would come after Stephen Fry’s appearance on Jonathan Ross’s chat show. The old PR faux pas occurred where thousands wanted to check out the website and due to sheer numbers, nobody could. Quality and continuity of service need to be foolproof before any thoughts of cash are had
· Understanding uses – twitter is a boon to marketing types and journalists but there is still a massive portion of web-savvy consumers that don’t use it. Twitter is amazing for information sharing and that’s why we all love it, but some people still simply can’t see the point. Many now-advocates of twitter (including me) dismissed it on the first try and many others will inevitably join, but some will never get involved. Stephen Waddington, MD of Rainier PR looked at the tech adoption lifecycle in his blog. Twitter and marketers using twitter need to understand this if they are to do anything profitable with the site.
· Understanding users – people are often put-off when new media sites are ‘tainted’ with the corporate dollar. Twitter needs to tread carefully, understanding the who, how and why of using the site before anything is even beta tested on the site
· Innovation – obviously advertising money has to come into the bargain at some point, but an innovative service demands innovation in monetisation. So many sites just slap on a load of banner or flash ‘slide over’ ads in a quick stack ‘em up and pile ‘em high selling mentality. If twitter is to carry advertising, it needs to develop something non-intrusive and useful whilst addressing any data privacy concerns that arise. Although, the fact that everything uploaded to the site is public anyway may negate certain problems from the outset.
There’s definitely a fair way to go before twitter makes any significant cash but they’re bound to start trying soon enough. For the when and how we’ll just have to wait and see…