Social Media - New Twitter, Monetization, Business Models and You

Twitter. It feels like it has been with us for ever. In fact it was conceived and launched only in 2006. The 140 character size of "tweets" arose because at the time the service was designed to be used with SMS text messages on mobile phones, as well as on the web.

Twitter is a free service which has not carried any form of advertising. Until recently it was only guesswork how they would make money. Nonetheless Twitter has raised over $50 million from venture capitalists. Apparently Twitter is looking  for $1.5billion of revenue in 2013. So how will Twitter make this money? And how will that affect you and your business?

At the heart of Twitter is a database of users and tweets, recently extended to include the optional location “geotags” of the locality of where a tweet was sent. Twitter has allowed external software to read and write to that database through its API (Application Programming Interface). As a result a whole forest of “Twitter clients” has emerged, such as Tweetdeck. Many of these systems do carry advertising. So it is not unreasonable for the authors of Twitter clients to pay for usage of the API. In addition, search engines such as Google apparently pay to access Twitter accounts.

In April Twitter announced “Promoted Tweets” that would appear at the top of tweet searches, much like Google searches. In the summer they talked about a host of other ideas. However for businesses each case is just another form of advertising and PR, not fundamentally new..

New Twitter (September 2010)

Then this week Twitter launched “New Twitter”  This is a substantially enhanced Twitter web client of their own which they bill as “easier, faster, and richer experience”. This is in “preview” (beta) mode currently with a small number of users, with full rollout planned over the next few weeks.

The first thing to notice is that this new client places Twitter in direct competition with the Twitter web clients that previously provided a better interface than Twitter’s own. Is Twitter wanting their cake and eat it?

Nonetheless this new client is clearly aimed at increasing the number of registered, and more importantly “active” users. Apparently they are looking for 1 billion by 2013. The target is to make it a key part of everyone's daily lives.

How Can You Use Twitter In Your Business?

There are a variety of ways Twitter can be used by a business, from the smallest to the largest. These include:
•    Marketing, including geotagged tweets for local businesses
•    Customer service
•    News announcements
•    Reactively monitoring what is said about your business, especially complaints

Whilst the “New Twitter" does not add much in the way of underlying functionality, the increasing use of Twitter means it should form a core part of any business’s marketing mix. How are you using it?

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