Twitternomics: How Will Twitter Make Money, Not Whether Twitter Will Make Money

I don’t think that Fred Wilson’s comment about Twitter’s future revenue potential was that stupid. He was quoted saying

It’s like the stupidest question in the world: How’s Twitter going to make money. It’s like ‘How was Google going to make money? Eventually Google was going to make money and they figured out how to do it and they figured out a great business, and I think the same thing is true with Twitter.

He certainly oversimplified things and he has retracted his comment, saying now that wondering about money is an obvious and sensible question. Which I also agree with.

However, threading the two together is also sensible: yes, it is sensible to wonder how — specifically — Twitter is going to make money, but it is pretty dumb to suggest that there is no way that Twitter can make money in general, just because they have not yet settled on a single definitive path to money.

So the comments by Corvida at ReadWriteWeb run right off the rails:

Wilson has recanted his statements, but we do agree that Twitter could very well duplicate Google’s formula for success. However, Google is not Twitter and vice versa. We’re talking about two completely different services. There’s still a chance that Twitter won’t find a successful revenue model. For all we know, luck may have been on Google’s side. Up until recently, Twitter couldn’t say the same with numerous outages and stability issues plaguing the service.

D’uh. Yes, Google and Twitter are different businesses. Fred could have picked another example, like Henry Blodgett did, using AOL as a better indicator of what the future might be for Twitter, and pointing out that AOL had similar performance issues which were likewise fueled by explosive growth from eager users.

Apparently this will be moot in a few months, since it appears that Wired tickled an answer from a board member, Bijan Sabet says that new revenue models (note the plural) will be rolled out in the first half of 2009.