The SMS idea is good...they

bitpakkit — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:45:57 -0700

The SMS idea is good...they should be getting their share of that IYAM

Jon,
I ordered a customized failwhale shirt and it never appeared. My failwhale shirt failed, so that is not scalable even if it is profitable.

I would caution against API fees...learned the hard way at Y! that it causes friction and generates impossible SLA and licensing freedom expectations.

Im skeptical about the

Siva — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:19:43 -0700

Im skeptical about the banner ads. I think, text-based tweets could be option, but it should be non-intrusive.

Simply selling official

Jon — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:07:43 -0700

Simply selling official FailWhale merch could probably bring them into the black in a week :)

Text-based, content-relevant ads (e.g. Google) would seem to be a natural fit as well (plop it in the sidebar, with an occasional one in the twitstream itself (which pushes out to all the twitter RSS feeds as well?)

There's a lot of ways Twitter /shouldn't/ monetize their platform, so let's hope they get it right.

I'm not sure banner

Nikki Pilkington — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 01:21:01 -0700

I'm not sure banner advertising is the way to go (does anyone even bother with banners any more?)

And would paid posts take off? Or would users (the people that will be receiving the posts) leave in droves if they're effectively being spammed? Maybe it could work on an optin basis, but there would have to be a good reason to opt in.

Actually, thining aloud, if Twitter did go the banner ad route, then maybe peopl could have the choice of either paying for banner free access, or opting in to receive advertising messages as a way to remove banners? Not sure that the majority of users would like it though.

It neds handling carefully, IMO, or Twitter could lose even more users to Plurk et al.

10 ways that Twitter could make money quickly

Melissa Chang — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:42:21 -0700

Twitter, the popular micro-blogging service that asks users to update what they are doing 140 characters at a time, has received its share of press in the past year. From rounds of funding to being plagued by downtime, the service has had both ups and downs. One of the most constant criticisms of Twitter is its apparent lack of a business model.

Coming from a media background, my philosophy has always been "If you have an audience, you can figure out a way to make money." And Twitter has an audience. According to Hitwise, Twitter usage is continuing to see phenomenal growth and current estimates peg the number of users at more than 2 million.

With that kind of audience, Twitter is poised to make a boatload of money. How just depends on the business model that Twitter decides to follow. Here are 10 ways that Twitter could make money quickly.

1) Banner Advertising -- This may not be a creative audience-based money maker, but it works. Advertising is based on audience size, and with a large audience, Twitter should be able to crank out some money using traditional banner advertising. Twitter is already trying this experiment in Japan, and if it is successful, there is no reason that the company won’t roll banner advertising out to Twitter users everywhere.

2) Paid Posts -- Banners won’t reach the hundreds of thousands of users who don’t actually use the Twitter.com site, but who only interact with Twitter through third-party applications or SMS messaging. By allowing advertisers to pay to send a Twitter post that is distributed to all (or a percentage of) Twitter users, advertisers will be able to reach the audience in a relevant format. Posts would have to be tagged as sponsored, of course, and there would have to be limits on the number and frequency that they are sent to users, but this would be a fast way to reach the vast audience.

3) Sponsorships -- If Twitter decides that it doesn’t want to manage a large number of advertiser relationships (which can be a big pain), it could opt for a sponsorship model that would allow one advertiser to sponsor the entire site for a period of time. That sponsor would dominate the inventory -- the banner slots, the paid messages, etc. -- and this type of sponsorship would not come cheap. But many companies will leap at the chance to be affiliated with such a popular and cutting-edge service. And the first few companies to do so will likely get a ton of publicity, as well.

4) Charge for ad-free usage -- No doubt many people will protest if Twitter adds advertising, since the service has been ad-free for so long. For those people, Twitter could introduce a no-ad option that would require users who didn’t want to see any ads to pay to use the service. This is something that Twitter co-founder Evan Williams did when he started Blogger, and it could definitely work again here.

5) Tiered subscription model -- Many Twitter users have been clamoring for a paid version of the product for months, offering to pay to use Twitter if it just would stay up. Twitter will always need to maintain a free service level in order to appeal to the masses and to continue to grow its audience, but there is clearly an opportunity to charge users for enhanced capabilities. For example, there may be subscriptions that promise constant uptime, offer the ability to include photos, or provide the option for other types of posts. Or, what if Twitter simply charges users $1 each week that it doesn’t go down? That would give users what they want, and would give Twitter a financial incentive to increase uptime, as well.

6) Offer a monitoring package for businesses -- There has been no lack of publicity for the companies that are using Twitter effectively. Zappos and Comcast come to mind. But most companies haven’t even heard of Twitter, let alone started using it. Building a business-to-business interface that would allow companies to monitor their reputation on Twitter -- and begin to participate in the conversation -- should be relatively straightforward. And if Twitter charged companies to use the service, it could make money quickly. (Perhaps this is better as an idea for a new company based on the Twitter API, which brings us to the next idea . . .)

7) Charge companies that use the Twitter API -- Twitter’s API has been used to build some cool applications -- Twitterrific and Twhirl come to mind. And the API has at least 10x the amount of traffic of the Website, according to Williams. All the companies that are using the Twitter API can profit from the use of it with no benefit to Twitter. If Twitter continued to allow the free use of the API, with an understanding that they would get a percentage of all earnings based on profits, there would be some immediate revenue. Another suggestion is to charge for API requests with request-rate surcharges.

8) Affiliate program -- Users are recommending products, services, restaurants, stores and countries to visit all day long on Twitter. An affiliate program would allow users to sign up to start making money on some of their recommendations. If a user recommends a product that is part of the program, the user -- as well as Twitter -- would get a percentage of the sale.

9) List rental -- This may be a very Web 1.0 idea, but if Twitter put its opt-in email list on the market, it would earn a pretty penny.

10) Mobile payments -- This idea comes courtesy of Silicon Alley Insider, and it’s a good one. The P2P mobile payment market is wide open, and Twitter has the stuff in place to be able to capitalize.

These are just some of the many ways that Twitter could start making money quickly. Until it decides on a business model, however, Twitter will keep growing its audience while getting its cash the old-fashioned way -- through VC funding.

Follow Melissa Chang on Twitter @mchang16. She is the founder of Pure Incubation, an Internet incubator based in the Boston area, and has a blog at 16thletter.com.

More news, commentary, and predictions from The Industry Standard:

Prediction: Twitter starts serving ads stateside
Analysis: Is Twitter worth $75 million? $150 million? How about none of the above?
Analysis: Just 200,000 active Twitter users?
Analysis: Twitter: Fanatical users help build the brand, but not revenue
Analysis: Five reasons why a recession is a good time to start a company
News: Journalist saved by Twitter aims to start a Twitter-driven emergency network

The Industry Standard - 10 ways that Twitter could make money quickly - Comments

The SMS idea is good...they

Im skeptical about the

Simply selling official

I'm not sure banner

10 ways that Twitter could make money quickly