Twitter monetization

Will you pay to use twitter?

A couple of years ago, blogging was fancy. Come twitter, and the life style of millions of people have changed. Micro blogging or tweets is the way people communicate and the twitter community is proliferating multi fold every month. It is quite obvious that twitter will be monetized soon. What can be expected in the prototype operations? Will twitters have to pay?

Venture capitalists have invested $15.1 million till date in twitter, and it is their right to win every cent back at least two fold to see a good profit. Besides a brilliant medium of communication, twitter was actually a plan to create a channel of monetization. What are the possible channels for twitter monetization?

Channel 1 : Old fashioned way – Adsense and other PPC

To convert traffic to money, google adsense works magic. Twitter has already seen a billion tweets on its public timeline, and millions of users. Displaying adsense will milk money out of the traffic, but twitter would be labeled “uncreative“. While it is ok to display google adsense ads on google search, it was “uncreative” to display adsense ads (text ads) on youtube. Will people stick the label on twitter if adsense units are placed in the sidebar?

Twitter Japan is already monetized with ppc ads. Twitter should have been testing its ad services in one domain before making it global. So the adsense option is at the reach of the hands.

Gmail has also been using adsense inside the web interface, and advertisements ( PPC ) is the way facebook, orkut, and so many other networks are monetized. With numerous twitter clients already on the shore, the number of users using the web interface is becoming lesser. Introduction of adsense may drive more users out of the web interface. While adsense is a definite way of making money, twitter is nowhere near average in innovation. Or is the expectation too high? Will twitter simply milk money by introducing ads on the sidebar.

Ads in twitter

Channel 2 : Tweets as Ads

Text ads for text content and Video ads (pay per view) for video magazines. So tweet style ads for twitter? An occasional 140 character text ad may be tweeted on your behalf. While it may sound very much acceptable to tweet, say one paid tweet per day, imagine viewing one ad per user you are following. You might end up seeing hundreds of sponsored tweets everyday. More easily, this could start annoying people and could lead to other twitter style websites setting their foot strong. More thought to tweet style ads may raise to one sponsored tweet per 30 tweets, instead of a per day basis. An additional feature could be added using channel 3.

People have already started using twitter as a medium and publishing affiliate links in twitter. If somebody should make money out of twitter, it should be twitter, and not anybody else.

Tweets as ads

Channel 3 : Limit twitter followers, following, tweets per day. Twitter pro

Only those who use pay. Twitter might want to limit the number of followers and also number of following to a base limit. The cap can be 200 for the number of users you can follow and 2000 for the number of followers. On a alternative fashion, twitter may also limit the number of tweets you can publish per day. The limit could be raised if the users pay an annual fee of $25 or $50, depending on usage. ( Make use of twitter tools for follow management ). This clearly leaves the occasional tweeters without any worry and the people who cause the servers to sweat will pay.

Also, the tweet ads should be gone, if the user upgraded themselves to twitterpro.

Channel 4 : Twitter API access

The number of twitter clients has clearly surprised me, with a heavy percentage of users moving off the twitter web interface for some client or the other. The reason for the movement is quite obvious – operating system integration, search and other numerous features, basically the power users. In a attempt to keep twitter free of cost for basic users, twitter can monetize the power users by charging external client access. The web interface would be free, but taking twitter off the web and using it in a twitter client like thwirl or Twitteriffic would require a API KEY. The API KEY could be purchased on a monthly / yearly basis. [This is analogous to the yahoo mail monetization where POP access is available only for paid users. I know yahoo mail sucks, but this might work well for twitter]. This would leave mobile users stranded, and iphone users feel cheated. Twitter would like to go google style, where pop is free, but ads will be displayed in the web interface.

The API access would also require so many changes in the code. The twitter REST API now authenticates users by a username and a password. If twitter API were monetized, it would require the API authentication to be rewritten to include the API KEY.

Its going to happen soon, twitter will soon be monetized. Which channel do you think will be used in twitter? Will multiple channels be employed? Let us know your thoughts.

Related posts:

1. Twitter Co Founder : Sorry Apple, Twitter not for sale Google and Microsoft may have been edging each other to go ahead and close the twitter deal. Facebook offered $500 Million and were denied. There are rumors that Apple is involved in the race and might be keen on closing the deal June 8 (Apple worldwide Developer Conference). While the...
2. Six Twitter Follow management Tools you need Twitter has certainly revolutionized the lives of millions of people and adds to the internet addiction. Bloggers display the twitter followers count, just like they flaunt their feed subscriber count. While adding more and more people to your twitter list of followers is easy, there are a few twitter follow...