How I Tweet Plus Thoughts on Twitter's Future

If you haven't seen it, Darren Rowse has a great new blog about Twitter called TwiTip. This week he and his followers interviewed me about how I started using the service, how I Tweet today and what companies who want to engage on Twitter should do. I won't steal his thunder, but want to share an excerpt here on a potential business model and where Twitter will be in five years time ...

If you were on the management of Twitter how would you monetize Twitter? (or would you) - question from @sachendra

It seems to me that Twitter is sitting on cash. It just needs to
unlock the value. One way is through insights. I bet marketers would
pay for advanced insights on what people are saying/doing. The other is
through contextual search. Twitter should do a deal with Google or
Yahoo to put pay-per-click ads on all the permalink tweet pages and
then share the revs with users. The other idea is to monetize
search.twitter.com, also with contextual ads. I think the only reason
they’re delaying this is to make sure they don’t alienate their
community. That’s the biggest risk they face.

Is Twitter just a passing fad or will it still exist in 5 years? How do you see Twitter evolving? - question from @AnitaBruzzese and @justcreative

I have been a participant and observer of online communities since
1988 - that’s 20 years. There’s no community where I am spending time
today that was not born in the last five years. If I think back to what
I used over the years it spans from Compuserve to AOL to GeoCities to
Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed today. No community has ever had
staying power. TIme will tell if Twitter can break the trend. I don’t
see a moat there yet.

Further, they’re at risk at becoming just infrastructure as people
interface with the site through all of the other ports, most notably,
apps, Facebook and Friendfeed. I hope I am wrong. Five years may not be
a timeframe long enoughf for change.

Comments

[Jake]

Interesting thoughts Steve. I would have to agree with you though 5 years is a lot of staying power.

Also - I think you hit the nail on the head with the risk of becoming "just infrastructure." However, twitter seems to have a lot more staying power than the likes of geocities, which most if not all of us left long ago. I personally think it will evolve and grow... if like you said they can unlock the monetary potential.

[Derek Halpern]

The main problem with companies today is they build amazing products and try to ride them out without changing it. They assume... "What got them here, will get them there" (a great book if you haven't read it).

Instead, companies should build great products like Twitter, and then look to kill their own product with another one of their products. Because if they don't, someone else will.

So, if TWitter is willing to act unlike any other company today, they could last more than 5 years, but I just dont see it.

[Ashley Duque Kienzle]

Steve, I agree with your thought that twitter is sitting on insights that can be valuable to marketers. Twitter has already become a place for companies to monitor customer feedback and quickly react. It's also an easy way for companies to engage customers and send them to websites or update them on product launches. I can see twitter charging companies for usage and special campaigns for their twitter followers.