Okay, so how is Twitter going to make money if it’s free?

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Just read a great post by Adrants on Twitter still seeking a business model and still getting slammed two years on. The getting slammed part came particularly from Simon Dumenco who is a definite non-believer in the benefits of Twitter, especially if its a project which fails to make any money.

While Twitter has said and continues to say it has every intention of creating a business model which will support it beyond seed money, reading the revenue-generating notion “one idea is to charge companies th at want to use Twitter as an official channel to talk with their customers and monitor what they are saying,” causes one to ROFLOL to the point of gut-busting pain.

Charge companies? Charges companies? For what? Any company with half a brain already has access to an endless supply of free “listening” tools that offer fairly deep insight into Twitter usage and what’s being said about a particular brand.

Dumenco concludes not so inappropriately, writing, “I don’t think every tweet or blurp or bloop or fart that emanates from a human can or should have ads sold against it or be otherwise monetized.”

Of course Twitter is far more than any “blurp or bloop or fart that emanates from a human” , but still the man has a point. Twitter could charge a yearly fee to use the service, but then what should they charge? I certainly wouldn’t pay to follow a bunch of people talking about what they had for breakfast, or if they just came out for the shower, refreshed. Then again, if you’re paying for the service, maybe people who are really interested in adding value would buy into it and utilise it instead of it being just another social media plaything for the ever-growing population of digerati.

Another benefit of charging for it is that it would save us all from a barrage of useless advertising should Twitter opt for the advertising route.

I don’t know… maybe there is some creative way in which Twitter can make a good business model out of what they provide without totally pissing us all off. I hope they find it!

What do you think they should do?

While I’m here… :)

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