How does Twitter make money?

[IainW]

The title says it all.

Twitter is obviously extremely popular but is it a business and how does it pay for servers and so on?

Any ideas on how it makes it's money?

Iain

[cmarks]

I've stayed away from Twitter, not even looked at the site - but I'd hazzard a guess at ads?

Also, client base = money too, the more popular they are, the better the chance them selling up to someone who'd want to work with such a network.

[An Oasis]

Twitter does not have a business model. And given that VC dosh is at a premium I have no hopes for it.

[mubin]

As previously posted Twitter at the moment does not have a business model. they do have enough cash from a recount round of funding to get them through some tough times. They have recently hired a BDM so something should be in the works soon.

Facebook did not have a viable business model until recently, but seems to be doing okay.

[HC-Martin]

From their website:

How do you make money from Twitter?

Twitter has many appealing opportunities for generating revenue but we are holding off on implementation for now because we don't want to distract ourselves from the more important work at hand which is to create a compelling service and great user experience for millions of people around the world. While our business model is in a research phase, we spend more money than we make.

[Networkology]

We do very well from twitter. 30-50 uniques a day and 5+ sign-ups.

I think they'll go down the adverts & PPC route eventually like facebook.

[IainW]

They would make a fortune if they charged £1 to join, I bet you wouldn't lose many. let them join 1st so they see the benefits then charge them a month later.

http://twitter.com/WilliamsHoliday

[Xenonsoft]

Not a bad shout that Iain.

[wevet]

there is a site called TWE2 that says it is independant of twitter. What this does is that it converts your twitter postings into SMS messages that goout to your followers who have opted to receive the sms twitterings.

They make no charge to either party bu as a quid pro quo you have to accept ads sent by TWE2 to your mobile.

[Write My Site]

I've heard a rumour about businesses being made to pay to use Twitter but I've no idea whether that's accurate. I'd assume it would follow a similar model to Facebook (and UKBF!) and go for PPC ads.

[Buster123]

interesting thread

[stugster]

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/evan_williams_on_listening_to_twitter_users.html

[AdamJ]

Twitter does not have a business model. And given that VC dosh is at a premium I have no hopes for it.

I heard on a tech podcase a couple of weeks ago that Twitter has just sucessfully raised something like $12m in funding so someone must think there's a way to monetise it somehow.

[adi_cmi]

I think they could feasibly offer some kind of name trading service as well. At the moment it's far too easy for people to setup accounts on brand names and 'celeb' names. For instance there was a spoof account setup for Fred Goodwin recently and there are several big name brands without control over their brand name on the site, so it would seem sensible for people to be able to buy their name in the same way that they can their domain name.