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Thursday, October 15, 2009

Can Twitter Make Money For Itself

Many companies have figured out a way to use Twitter to augment their marketing tactics. It enables better communication to customers, reaches the brand fans, and enables quick feedback on how well the relationship between customer and company is doing. It is working for many companies save one, Twitter. Twitter cannot make money on itself.

I know of two ways to make money - subscription and advertising. As a free service, it would be very difficult for Twitter to start charging for subscription. And what else can they ad to try and build a premium level for a fee. And as for advertising, with only 140 characters and ideally suited for mobile devices, as well as the computer, there is not much room for an ad. Pop ups, no way; banners, how effective can they be. Twitter is an ideal mechanism to support marketing communications for others, but not itself.

There also seems to be two types of users: active twitterers and voyeurs. One constantly inputs info to the point of ad nauseum, the other likes to read what others are doing but has no interest in contributing to the banter. At some point, won't the first group get tired of writing tweets and move on to the next thing. Won't the latter group get bored of reading nothing more than nonsense and find something else to do.

At least for other social networking sites, like Facebook and My Space, there is more to do than post. And with more options come more potential opportunities to add advertising. Twitter seems so limited when compared to others.