How does Twitter make money?
 

They have no ads and it's a free service. I can't figure out how they monetize their site. Any speculation? Someone has suggested to me that they may get a cut of the SMS fees that people pay to Tweet from their phones, but I pay no SMS fees to Tweet. (then again I have an iPhone with an unlimited data plan)

Anyone have any theories?

They make money selling the userinfo

It doesn't

They make money by selling the whole service to someone, who will then have to worry about how they make money.

Right now - from investors giving them money.

This makes the most sense. It's surprising as popular as it is, that fact has not come out in the newsmedia.

From their Privacy Policy:

Twitter has been very public about the fact that they don't make any money. They don't sell anything right now.

in 2 years Microsoft will probably buy it for $250million. And thats how they will make their money

Twitter doesn't wantr to sell anytime soon. Soon they will be selling marketing platforms for working within their network.

How can Wal-Mart monetize twitter?
How can wal-mart organize the posts made to them.

Right now its very tough to organize. If Twitter develops its own internal system for corp giants to use their service the best.. Those giants will pay dearly for it.

classic data mining. you are profiled by what you say or who you "follow" and sold to the highest bidder :upsidedow

:thumbsup

How does the Hun man money?

they don't. the usual silicon valley pump and dump.

They won't sell until they're nestled next to Facebook in Alexa top 5 - which probably will be within a year (assuming Facebook doesn't move past Yahoo by then which it may well do). They'll be getting multi-billion dollar offers at that time, which will be a lot harder to say no to.

http://www.nametrader.com/alexa.jpg

Forget about how Twitter makes money, get an account and start tweeting before its too late.

Twitter is going to have a much shorter shelf life than any of the other social sites. The metrics show that over 70% of the users totally quit following or tweeting after 30 days or less.

Facebook will be around till the next big site comes out, but Twitter will fade pretty quick. The numbers just don't support any growth.

Will they survive the next few years?

Investors might start looking at the ROI in today's economic climate.

Further proof that traffic alone is not the answer. You have to make a profit from the traffic.

This is how Twitter is going to make money and I predict they hit 9 figures next year.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/07/...possibilities/

It's amazing how people in investing in a company can make such a big mistake.

The difference is people go to Google to find information and get adverts related to their search. People on Twitter are looking to pass time and don't have any specific need most of the time. Two totally different types of advertising.

A much brighter answer.

I have no idea. From banner sponsors?

only a fool would gets caught up in the hype and stops looking at facts, hence why most here dont have two pennies to rub together

twitter in a year from now will be laughable, in 3 years from now people will be embarrassed to admit they once used the site.

Very true. I wonder what other similar sites will be history in a few years.

Plenty are just "passing time" on Google as well. I agree that there's a difference in someone searching in Google and someone searching Twitter, but take a look at search.twitter.com. Twitter's the only real time "search" out there. No, it's not web pages, but it's what people are talking about IN REAL TIME. That's pretty amazing if you think about it. What other site can archive conversation or blurbs in real time among millions and millions of people all over the world. Search engines can't come close. When news hits, regardless of the size. i.e., Michael Jackson Dead or Car Accident 101 Freeway, search twitter and see how many results you get. Then type that in Google, excluding the news section and see what you find. Usually Zilch, because they can't crawl that fast. Especially for local news or events, it can beat almost any content site out there.

And ads on Twitter, could actually be a higher converter than google!? How? Say you type insurance in google and you land on a sales web site desperately trying to get you to click on an affiliate link with little information on the user experience about the company. Or say you type in insurance in Twitter and you have a real person, talking about a good experience at Gieco. There just happens to be a Geico ad right below the post, where the reader wants to see more. It's like a real time review. That's just one possibility on how you could target ads. Companies are making money off it too, Dell has reported they've made $3 million from it. http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/...y-off-twitter/. Don't you sell anything? You can't use the extra traffic?

I wouldn't expect Murdoch to have anything positive to say about sites that compete with myspace. He trashed Facebook too back in the day and watched his users switch and his traffic plummet.

In any case, I'm going to bump this thread in a year and it'll be interesting to see what happened.

damn thats good idea :pimp

Spot on my man

i don`t know...

yea quite amazing, example from their suggested search for "jay z"
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=Jay-Z
no informative data at all, just some random bullshit

the idea of real time search is great but what people post is a different matter.

http://talentedapps.files.wordpress....winner-win.jpg

Winner! :)