4 ms·

It's a little mysterious how Twitter manages to stay in business now, given that they don't seem to charge anyone for anything.

nir 17y ago
They're in business with the money they raised. The fact that putting up a few content pages nets them an NY Times story probably doesn't hurt attracting further investment..
- RyanMcGreal 17y ago
  Yes, that's what makes me nervous. I remember back in 1999 listening to a startup CFO saying her company was having cash-flow problems and needed more VC funding, and thinking that what they really needed was a revenue stream. (That was when I realized with a clunk that the dot com bubble's days were numbered.) Twitter has been remarkably successful at attracting a huge community of users and developers for their service, but sooner or later they're going to have to find a way to monetize that - without alienating the huge user base on which any viable monetizing plan must depend.
  - froo 17y ago
    "without alienating the huge user base on which any viable monetizing plan must depend." See, I think you've completely missed the point with twitter not monetising currently. They're doing small, consistent UI changes, easing users into the potential ad-supported experience. Twitter's users barely flinched when Twitter implemented the "ads" on the web UI on the right. Now with the leaked documents, it's pretty clear where Twitter is going - Real Time search. One would expect some sort of adwords clone will be implemented. Just because they're not monetising right now, doesn't mean there is no revenue plan being tossed around inside Twitter HQ. I'm not a betting man, but I'd lay money on it.
  - michaelfairley 17y ago
    Currently, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are all in the red. They have enormous value because of their potential to make gobs of cash due to the amount of eyes that look at them everyday. The problem during the dot-com boom/bust was that ideas that were basically crap (aka. had no real users, nor much potential to get them) were getting wayyyy too much money, and were often being started and led by business types who thought they could just hire some programmers and their ideas would spring to life and make them infinitely rich. FB/YT/Twitter are all in a very different position and actually have potential to make their investors infinitely rich in the not too distant future.
    - RyanMcGreal 17y ago
      FB/YT/Twitter ... have potential to make their investors infinitely rich in the not too distant future. Yes, but how? And what is stopping them from doing it already? Edit: I understand that Google is working on algorithms that will let them parse content from videos so they can include targeted ads (I've heard it suggested that Google's free 411 service is an exercise in collecting speech samples for just this purpose).
      - nir 17y ago
        Facebook and YouTube have a lot of user who spend a lot of time there. This at least makes an ad model possible. Twitter does not have that, especially considering how long it's been around (it was launched about 6 months after YouTube) and how unbelievably overhyped it is, and a large share of the users it does have are spam accounts. Only time will tell, but I think along with "make their investors infinitely rich in the not too distant future" there's also a strong option of "completely forgotten in the not too distant future".
sfphotoarts 17y ago
It's called Venture Capital, and they have a lot of it.
skolor 17y ago
It would not (entirely) surprise me to see a large portion of their business model coming from data-sets. Back at the end of 2008, an individual gathered every single Tweet that had been made to that point, simply by trying every possible Tweet-ID. He released the data-set, and promptly took it down, because the Twitter staff had contacted him. They apparently were in talks, and I never did see the end result. Here is the blog post on it: http://blog.infochimps.org/2008/12/29/massive-scrape-of-twitters-friend-graph/ http://blog.infochimps.org/2008/12/29/massive-scrape-of-twit... He collected 10 million Tweets, which was a side-effect when trying to gather a graph of user-following, and got permission from Twitter staff to release it, after which they changed their mind. Its rather disapointing, and would have been a great corpus to do work on. Either way, I think Twitter could develop a significant profit-stream by bringing in some stats staff, and running analysis on their end against the databases. If Twitter really does want to become "the heartbeat of the internet" or whatever they called it, that's the way to monetize it.

nir 17y ago

They're in business with the money they raised. The fact that putting up a few content pages nets them an NY Times story probably doesn't hurt attracting further investment..

RyanMcGreal 17y ago
Yes, that's what makes me nervous. I remember back in 1999 listening to a startup CFO saying her company was having cash-flow problems and needed more VC funding, and thinking that what they really needed was a revenue stream. (That was when I realized with a clunk that the dot com bubble's days were numbered.) Twitter has been remarkably successful at attracting a huge community of users and developers for their service, but sooner or later they're going to have to find a way to monetize that - without alienating the huge user base on which any viable monetizing plan must depend.
- froo 17y ago
  "without alienating the huge user base on which any viable monetizing plan must depend." See, I think you've completely missed the point with twitter not monetising currently. They're doing small, consistent UI changes, easing users into the potential ad-supported experience. Twitter's users barely flinched when Twitter implemented the "ads" on the web UI on the right. Now with the leaked documents, it's pretty clear where Twitter is going - Real Time search. One would expect some sort of adwords clone will be implemented. Just because they're not monetising right now, doesn't mean there is no revenue plan being tossed around inside Twitter HQ. I'm not a betting man, but I'd lay money on it.
- michaelfairley 17y ago
  Currently, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are all in the red. They have enormous value because of their potential to make gobs of cash due to the amount of eyes that look at them everyday. The problem during the dot-com boom/bust was that ideas that were basically crap (aka. had no real users, nor much potential to get them) were getting wayyyy too much money, and were often being started and led by business types who thought they could just hire some programmers and their ideas would spring to life and make them infinitely rich. FB/YT/Twitter are all in a very different position and actually have potential to make their investors infinitely rich in the not too distant future.
  - RyanMcGreal 17y ago
    FB/YT/Twitter ... have potential to make their investors infinitely rich in the not too distant future. Yes, but how? And what is stopping them from doing it already? Edit: I understand that Google is working on algorithms that will let them parse content from videos so they can include targeted ads (I've heard it suggested that Google's free 411 service is an exercise in collecting speech samples for just this purpose).
    - nir 17y ago
      Facebook and YouTube have a lot of user who spend a lot of time there. This at least makes an ad model possible. Twitter does not have that, especially considering how long it's been around (it was launched about 6 months after YouTube) and how unbelievably overhyped it is, and a large share of the users it does have are spam accounts. Only time will tell, but I think along with "make their investors infinitely rich in the not too distant future" there's also a strong option of "completely forgotten in the not too distant future".

sfphotoarts 17y ago

It's called Venture Capital, and they have a lot of it.

skolor 17y ago

It would not (entirely) surprise me to see a large portion of their business model coming from data-sets. Back at the end of 2008, an individual gathered every single Tweet that had been made to that point, simply by trying every possible Tweet-ID. He released the data-set, and promptly took it down, because the Twitter staff had contacted him. They apparently were in talks, and I never did see the end result. Here is the blog post on it: http://blog.infochimps.org/2008/12/29/massive-scrape-of-twitters-friend-graph/ http://blog.infochimps.org/2008/12/29/massive-scrape-of-twit... He collected 10 million Tweets, which was a side-effect when trying to gather a graph of user-following, and got permission from Twitter staff to release it, after which they changed their mind. Its rather disapointing, and would have been a great corpus to do work on. Either way, I think Twitter could develop a significant profit-stream by bringing in some stats staff, and running analysis on their end against the databases. If Twitter really does want to become "the heartbeat of the internet" or whatever they called it, that's the way to monetize it.