Twitter's Business Model

Allen Stern wonders about the Twitter business model. Do they have a business model, he wonders? He points out that Twitterific is making money selling a client while Twitter -- who is managing the network -- is making bupkis.

Winer suggests that Twitter could offer a better client, and outflank Twitterific: Ok, but that might be small potatoes. If you are Ma Bell, selling phones is not the same as charging for access, though.

Calacanis makes the obvious riposte: in-stream advertising. No one is going to object to an occasional ad tweeting by, if the service is free.

Last, but not least, if third parties wanted to build other apps that use a twitter-esque social stream, they might make an agreement to reuse the twitter pathway. I have argued that common components of this type is the next step toward open standards in the social web (see The Architecture of Sociality: Building In Openness). As long as I could push stuff through the pipe, I would be willing to pay a per message bulk deal. And I believe that the notion of a common social stream -- being reused by many apps -- is a big chewy idea. However, it might be that the Twitter architecture is too limited for that. We will have to see.

Comments

[Mark Scrimshire]

what is interesting is that Twitter appears to be using Amazon S3 to store some of it's data - check the url for pictures on the site.

May be they will be shifting more of the twitter service over to Amazon's storage, messaging and processing platform. With the release of Developer Services they could even have a mechanism to charge the heaviest users....