Twitter: here is a business model for you
If I doubted Twitter before and became a recent convert, … well this week I became a Twitter lover.
What did it for me?
It was watching the tweets come across the ticker in real time on Tuesday while Google were announcing their new features at the emetrics conference in D.C., some 2,500 miles away from me.
It was like being there in person. Thanks to tweets, e.g. by @June_Li. What a great use of Twitter.
But Twitter has a problem:
It hasn’t found a business model.
And, famously, Twitter users also have a problem:
The vast majority of tweets are boring and a nuisance. And some tweeters tweet more often than they have interesting things to share. It’s a new form of spam! There should really be a frequency crap. [Note on Oct 26th: oh oh, freudian slip, as Mike Keyes caught. That was meant to read "cap"]
Twitter could do everybody and themselves a big favor and solve both problems with a single strike.
I’d propose they should charge an increasing price for each tweet per person per day, e.g. as follows:
- Your first tweet per day is free
- 2nd tweet per day, you pay 50 cents
- 3d, you pay $1
- 4th, you pay $2
- 5th, you pay $4
- 6th, you pay $8
Surely, if something is worth saying to your followers you will spend a buck to do so. And if it isn’t worth a buck even to you, then, by all means, shut up.
Meanwhile, Twitter would leave it completely free to follow as many tweets as you like.
Twitter could forecast how much revenue they can expect from a move like this. Since they aren’t doing this, I presume they will have thought it through and probably concluded that there is a problem with this idea. The numbers might not add up to justify their current $1B valuation maybe.
