![Much has been speculated, debated and weighed when it comes to the business of turning Twitter into a business. To me, its been a fairly uninteresting question to spend too much time dwelling on. Then tonight, as I was catching up on tweets from the people I follow, I saw this from my friend Josh Spear. Note the [Sponsored Tweet] he appends to the end of his update. Knowing Josh, this was a farce but it highlighted what has been nagging at me related to this question of how Twitter makes money and springboards from a thriving service to a thriving business.
Twitter has moved beyond a destination site for many of its users, so injecting ads into their feeds or adjacent to it isn’t all that interesting. Based on my personal bit.ly stats It appears that only about 15 to 20 percent of activity on Twitter is actually happening at the .com domain. Most is occurring in various 3rd party desktop and mobile clients, SMS and even email. Its amazing to see how passionate users and opportunists have stretched, tugged, twisted and pulled Twitter to become what they need and want it to be. And, how Twitter has facilitated that creativity.
So why stop with access?
Why not simply let users figure out what THEY want the business model to be. Its similar to how open source companies offer dual licenses for their software. Its available free for personal and recreational use. If you want to build a commercial application on top of it, you pay. Someone wants to run ads in their Twitter client, Twitter should get a cut. Someone wants to sell ad space in their tweets, Twitter should get a cut. Companies want to build applications for brands to mine data and interact with users, Twitter should get a cut. Someone wants to build a paid iPhone app, Twitter should get a cut.
At the end of the day, I don’t think Twitter should be in the business of figuring out how they become a business. I think they should give their users a stable service and handful of tools, then get out of their way. With a team of less than 50 employees, Twitter is in a position to create an army of millions of passionate users to do most of the commercialization work for them. And, that’s a pretty enviable platform to build a business on.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/rCFBmkCiukbpr9yrw01baJrEo1_500.jpg)
Much has been speculated, debated and weighed when it comes to the business of turning Twitter into a business. To me, its been a fairly uninteresting question to spend too much time dwelling on. Then tonight, as I was catching up on tweets from the people I follow, I saw this from my friend Josh Spear. Note the [Sponsored Tweet] he appends to the end of his update. Knowing Josh, this was a farce but it highlighted what has been nagging at me related to this question of how Twitter makes money and springboards from a thriving service to a thriving business.
Twitter has moved beyond a destination site for many of its users, so injecting ads into their feeds or adjacent to it isn’t all that interesting. Based on my personal bit.ly stats It appears that only about 15 to 20 percent of activity on Twitter is actually happening at the .com domain. Most is occurring in various 3rd party desktop and mobile clients, SMS and even email. Its amazing to see how passionate users and opportunists have stretched, tugged, twisted and pulled Twitter to become what they need and want it to be. And, how Twitter has facilitated that creativity.
So why stop with access?
Why not simply let users figure out what THEY want the business model to be. Its similar to how open source companies offer dual licenses for their software. Its available free for personal and recreational use. If you want to build a commercial application on top of it, you pay. Someone wants to run ads in their Twitter client, Twitter should get a cut. Someone wants to sell ad space in their tweets, Twitter should get a cut. Companies want to build applications for brands to mine data and interact with users, Twitter should get a cut. Someone wants to build a paid iPhone app, Twitter should get a cut.
At the end of the day, I don’t think Twitter should be in the business of figuring out how they become a business. I think they should give their users a stable service and handful of tools, then get out of their way. With a team of less than 50 employees, Twitter is in a position to create an army of millions of passionate users to do most of the commercialization work for them. And, that’s a pretty enviable platform to build a business on.
