Despite an army of evangelists (like me), a growing number of users (like BusinessWeek) and national newspaper coverage, Twitter doesn’t make a penny. CEO Evan Williams has been fielding questions for months on how Twitter will make money.
Having turned down an offer from Facebook, it seems that monetization is again front-of-mind for Williams. He’s recruiting a Twitter product manager to figure out a way to bring in some cash.
Blogosphere A-lister Robert Scoble did a superb analysis of micro-blogging’s monetization possibilities a few days ago, suggesting that donations and ‘search and destination’ methods could be looked at in addition to straight-up advertising, charging commercial users or the dreaded pay-per-tweet system.
Twitter is no stranger to money. Various forms of commerce are possible, and freelance journalist Guy Clapperton apparently picked up extra work very early on in his Twitter life. This week, Twitpay launched, enabling users to transfer money via a tweet.
The question is, how will Twitter get some of this monetary goodness for itself?
micro-blog, monetization, Twitter