Twi££er
Tweet Written by Danny Whatmough
[a pants SEO title, I know]
Credit to http://www.flickr.com/photos/zizzy/
With the media scrum around all things Twitter at the moment, it’s no surprise that the ‘revenue-model’ issue would raise its jealous little head.
If I was in charge, I wouldn’t be worrying about revenue models. They are on the tip of an iceberg. Now the focus should be on improving the service as numbers grow and securing its position amongst the legions of copy-cats that have and will come along.
But hey, its not my company.
Twitter to charge?
So today, Marketing has alleged reported that Twitter is to start charging businesses to use the service.
Hmmm.
This story feels slightly odd. It has been widely reported before that this was on the cards, but would Biz Stone really reveal all at this point in time to Marketing?
Much as I love Marketing, I think they might be jumping the gun slightly. Stone said:
“We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts.” [my emphasis]
I would suggest this is merely one model being looked at. And I doubt it would be possible to implement. The chief obstruction in my mind is how on earth they would differentiate (and/or police) brand accounts and personal accounts? Maybe by limiting follower numbers? But then some of the biggest Twitter ‘celebrities’ have huge numbers on their personal accounts – and yet they are possibly the most powerful brands using the service [a subject for another post me thinks]. Any my own account often transcends biz/personal boundaries…
Robin Grant from Wearesocial makes some additional, valid arguments in the comments under the original article [it seems his words were slightly skewed too...]
I’m sure Twitter will resolve this issue well before the VC cash runs dry. Either they will sell up to the big G, or will work out a way to fund themselves with the x million users they currently have and the endless numbers they will surely attract in months to come.