22 Comments

  1. I’ve said for ages that Twitter should just charge money. It’s a messaging platform. I reckon a freemium model would work nicely, free for low-volume users and then charge for higher-volumes and add-on services like SMS. The two tiers naturally fall into those who use it for an occasional dabble and those who choose to make it a core part of their communications mix.

    The beauty of Twitter its simplicity. The subtle strength is its open API. Tarting up the core service with wankery like collectibles and virtual items and auctions is all about turning to simple core messaging service into a fancy community-building platform and I reckon that’d be the wrong path to take. But nothing wrong with others building on that simplicity with tools like foursquare for those who want that kind of thing.

  2. Interesting post and some good thinking in here. A low-paid for membership for added features could be the way to go but my prediction is that is going to buy the best applications and make a super-application that only it can make with it’s own data. The problem then is whether this switches the rest of the Twitter eco-system off by trying to control the game entirely. It has to play a very careful balancing game to a make money and b not annoy everyone that uses it. Interesting times.

  3. A premium model is a great idea although I think advertising is a far more lucrative way to monetize twitter, how though I don’t know… Stilgherrian you are right when you say the beauty of twitter is simplicity thats the problem trying to monetize it while still keeping the simplicity – impossible??

  4. A joining fee makes the most sense – can they back charge the millions of users though thats the problem… They would loose loads of accounts if they tried to upset the apple cart now! If its not broke don’t fix it I say πŸ™‚

  5. Pingback: Laurel Papworth
    1. Unlikely, as Twitter needs to keep growing. Paywalls cannibalise other revenue streams (people expect everything for free, advertisers don’t get the numbers, p2p sales are limited etc). Never charge your product as a customer except for freemium services πŸ˜›

    2. Unlikely, as Twitter needs to keep growing. Paywalls cannibalise other revenue streams (people expect everything for free, advertisers don’t get the numbers, p2p sales are limited etc). Never charge your product as a customer except for freemium services πŸ˜›

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