Hey Twitter, strike while the iron is hot
Busy day of meetings today, but here’s some free advice for the folks behind Twitter (having lunch with Rick Segal gets the creative juices going). The growth and buzz of your Tweet business is remarkable. Leapfrogging Facebook is actually in your sights. What I can tell you is this: I get the sense that a huge component of your users will pay a fee for the right to talk about what they had for breakfast, what wine they are tasting, or their deepest 140 character thought regarding last night’s untelevised Raptor win over the Orlando Magic.
Starting tomorrow, or Monday at the latest.
So, don’t wait to “figure out” the business model. And there’s no need to settle on click throughs, Google Ads, or banner revenue. Institute a subscription fee, and charge it to a credit card if you can’t get the carriers to put it onto the cell phone bills. Make it small. Charge it monthly. If I was MasterCard, I’d love to be the exclusive credit card of Twitter, and I wouldn’t charge you a massive fee for each 25 cents you run through my system.
Have tiered account pricing, so that folks who follow but don’t post pay a very small fee. The posters can pay double what the lurkers are being charged. If it’s a corporate account, such as Starbucks, NPR, The New York Times or The Toronto Star, maybe charge them 10x that figure, per handle, and sell them an enterprise-wide licence, just like Research In Motion did with the BES. The interest that large corporates have in Twitter is phenomenal, and it is still early days.
Start small. Maybe 25 or 50 cents per month. A number that will keep conversion to a paid service over something like 50 or 75%. There’s no need to go the highend route of sites such as Ancestry.com, just yet.
The time is right to turn Twitter into the cable service of the internet. Many of us pay hundreds of dollars each year for television channels that were free to over-the-air customers just a generation ago.
Strike while the iron is hot. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at the take-up.
MRM
Twitter: markrmcqueen
nah. makes no sense. the number of users they would drive away by charging won’t be offset by the revenues they would garner – and this company will be sold on user base rather than revenue. so your just reducing your multiple come exit time. the best strategy is to work like crazy to keep the growth going for the next year or so and then sell to some bigger, dumber company who thinks they can monetize the thing either as a standalone or thru "synergies" with other products in the acquirer’s portfolio. time the exit when the economy swings back and web 3.0 becomes a buzzword. if you think that they have enough of a base that people can’t leave en masse, your also wrong. plenty of other twitter clones out there that would easily scoop up the users (the word of mouth that twitter relies on so heavily can easily turn against itself). its hard to imagine that web companies would pay for user bases in this economic environment, but they will again when things get rosier. oh yes, you know they will. still there’s risk in this strategy, but its a risk that i’m sure their vc backers/board members are comfortable assuming. swing for the fences, my man.
I’d have to side with freetwitter on this one. Charging, even minimal fees for usage, would drive an enormous amount of individuals away from the site and toward competing services – especially in this economic climate. Indeed, revenues would surge, but the backlash from existing users would be far more damaging. When rumors began to surface that Facebook would start charging for access to the site, users promptly created groups against the change – stating they’d leave instantly. Two of the largest, “If you charge, we leave” Facebook groups have nearly 6 million members – with thousands more joining daily. Charging for usage just isn’t worth it. What Twitter should focus on is changing the layout of the site, so as to create more space for advertisements. Doing so would allow Twitter to boost revenues without the risk of losing its users.
I wouldn’t pay a penny for Twitter. Hell, it’s free now and I wouldn’t waste my time with it.
actually the mobile operators would do a revenue split pretty quickly on the in and outbound sms, it’s a model that’s supported by every MNO…we do it with the adult market…
In the same way that drivers will go out of their way to avoid a toll road, I’m not sure that paying even a nominal fee for twitter would fly.
I would be willing to pay something that is worth less than cup of coffee every month or so, but just the "hassle" factor of paying such a small amount using credit card or paypal would turn me away.
At this stage, it is still all about acquiring users – monetization will need to wait till later and will probably be done by someone else (who buys them).
No need to charge the little dogs. Charge the celebrity accounts based on their followers. These folks already have ghost writers, and can afford it.
Tiered pricing, you first thousand followers are free and after that you have to pay in batches of $100 at $1 a follower.
Put the burden on the celebrity, not on the hapless voyeur 😉
I think charging would work, based on your proposed model. There is no competition in the Twitter space and frankly lots of folks are quite addicted to using it.
Excellent advice but they haven’t got the balls to do it!
If I were CEO of Twitter I’d be listening to you and switching on subscription services right now.
It doesn’t have to offend, all they need to do initially is be slightly creative. Start selling ‘Gold Member’ status, help grow their twitfanbase e-peen and there’s your first wad of cash landing on the doorstep, everyone wins, ego’s grow, emotions run high, critics whine (great publicity) and a real business is born.
I’ll say that last part again – ‘a real business is born’ now wouldn’t that make a nice change from the facebook bullhorns club.
charging – Think charging users is not the way to go, people will go to something that’s free and alternatives will be created.
ads – a lot of people use third party apps, so you’re not getting the most out of the user base.
Think what they’re doing is right, experiment with big business executions (exectweets) and enter discussions with Goog to monetise the real time search either through Google or through Twitter’s platform.
No way, Jose. You’re way off on this one, sorry. With the global economy nosedive just beginning to gain speed, this would be the worst time to charge for anything. It’s not the 50 cents a month, as much as the principal of it. People are getting fed up of being nickle-and-dimed to death. There is something in the air. The little people are revolting. Best bet is to crank up the user base and sell, sell, sell!
Nice thoughts.
The only problem with putting the fee on the phone bill is that they take 50% off the top. Purchase a $1.99 ringtone or wall paper and the phone company earns about $1.
ROTFL! Twitter walks a very narrow tightrope. For the vast majority of its users, it would be easy to abandon.
Twitter is addictive but not vital. Mess with the addictive part (by charging) and the addiction vanishes like dew on a hot day.
Only the social media butterflies and businesses with a direct ROI would pay for twitter. But what is the ROI with twitter? I would not miss it if it disappeared tomorrow.