I’ve been getting into Twitter (under my usual moniker – randfish) more and more over time (despite only following a few friends and family), and lately, its been weighing on me that the service, despite its brilliance, rapid adoption and passionate fanbase, isn’t yet pursuing revenue. That’s OK – I think they probably have lots of very smart, talented, experience people thinking about the problem and taking action to prepare for it. However, I thought it might be fun to brainstorm some concepts publicly and recruit the smart SEO crowd to pitch in.
First off, here are the ideas I’d toss – I don’t think they make good sense. Thumbs down to:
- Third-Party Contextual Advertising – Google AdSense or YPN just don’t excite me, and I think they’d undermonetize and be limited to only those folks who use Twitter on the web (and not through third party apps or mobile).
- Broadcast Tweet Ads – Sending users a random ad tweet every 5, 10 or even 50 tweets isn’t exciting and it’s not targeted the way Twitter should be. Twitter knows something about everyone; leverage that if you’re going to message your users.
- Display Ads – For the same reasons as contextual advertising
- Third Party Aps & APIs – I love that it’s free now, and I think Twitter will be far more valuable by remaining completely free to users and open to developers.
- Pay for Corporate Accounts – Can’t prove you’re a real person? Twitter charges for your corporate/brand account. It’s an easy one (even if people set up lots of sock puppets to get around it, Twitter’s sales/spam team can go find the valuable accounts), but it doesn’t have the targeting value or the potential that some of the others do.
- Pay for Followers – Twitter fans are going to get angry quickly if you auto-sign them up to follow a brand or person they don’t know. I’d stay far away from this one.
- Pay for Followed Links – Something tells me Google would be pretty quick to penalize Twitter and they probably don’t want to make enemies with the search giant just yet. 🙂
And here’s some ideas I really like:
- Keyword Purchases – Every time someone Tweets the word “SEOmoz,” I, as an advertiser, want two things. First, I want those users recorded so I can message to them in the future and second, I want the word to automatically become a link pointing to the page of my choosing (probably a Twitter-specific landing page for PRO in our case).
- Search Ads on Twitter Search – As Twitter search becomes more popular (and it will, not just for obsessed Twitterers, brand managers and reputation analysts, but for regular users and marketers and researchers, too), placing relevant ads in those searches becomes valuable. Better yet, you can combine Twitter searches with tweet history, so I could, for example, only show my ad to Twitter users who search for “SEO” and have previously twittered (or received twitters from those they follow) with my brand name.
- Charging for Power Accounts – Your first 1,000 followers are free. After that, no one can follow you until you pay $50 a year (or some nominal, but affordable number). When you get to 5,000 or 10,000, the price goes up.
- Subscribe Invitations from Advertisers – When I log into Twitter or reach my account page on the site, an overlay could indicate that some users have invited me to follow them. Those “invitations” could have 140 characters to say something clever and enticing enough to attract me and Twitter could target them based on my followers, followees and tweet history. There’s a lot of targeting options for a brand manager seeking new followers.
- Targeted Tweet Ads Based on Tweet History – Unlike the broadcast ad concept I didn’t like above, these would rely on user history and profile to make them effective. If I’ve tweeted a combination of words a number of times or follow people who have, I’m an ideal candidate to receive a sponsored tweet every 20 or 50.
- Opt-In Geo-Tweet Ads – You Tweet a location and advertisers can Tweet back (and appear in your mobile updates) with messaging. It’s a pretty solid concept, although I worry that opt-in adoption rates would be low unless the advertiser quality controls were extremely high.
- Pay to Opt Out of Ads – Don’t want to receive Tweet ads or sponsored tweets (and maybe get some extra member features like a more robust timeline and maybe greater visibility or listing in some sort of Twitter user directory)? Pay $3 or $6 or $9 a month. It’s a great extra revenue stream for those who’d (inevitably) complain about the ads.
Your turn – any good ideas for how Twitter should monetize? Any guesses as to which they’ll adopt and when?
p.s. I recognize that many folks around the web have probably already voiced these ideas, and I’ve glanced at a few headlines on the topic, but thought I’d come at it independently without reading anything else first. If this were my job, I’d approach it much more systematically.
