Mobile Computing News

Photo: Twitter

Twitter has a lot of users. It generates a lot of activity with over 50 million tweets daily. It’s also been the contemporary tech darling with the company’s founder, Evan Williams, appearing on the Oprah Winfrey Show to discuss the service. What is not in place, however, is a Twitter revenue model. That, if rumours are to be believed, is set to change.

Experimental phase

Though concrete information has yet to emerge, Anamitra Banerji, an executive at the company, has said they’re working on a platform to serve ads, but that platform is currently in test phase. This is not new, considering the most viable model has always seemed to be a Twitter ad platform, of sorts. What is in that experiment and how the ads will be served is the key point of interest.

Google similarities

If one recalls, Google itself did not have a revenue model until one of its engineers came up with the Adwords advertising platform. Since then, the company has exploded in growth and is one of the most influential on the planet. Twitter finds itself in a similar position, in that it has a captivated audience, and a lot of search queries that display or text ads can be served against. Where the two companies diverge, however, is that Twitter is not defined by search, so monetising users who do not search is an interesting challenge for whatever the Twitter revenue model turns out to be.

The Tweetie model

Photo: Apple

On the flipside, the Twitter ad platform may want to look at the model Tweetie, a Mac/iPhone Twitter application, uses for serving its ads. Basically, users can buy the application and toggle ads if so they choose, or they can keep using it freely. The free option allows for periodic – once every few hours – ads to pop up in the user’s tweet stream. The ads are very specific, and presented in a manner that’s as unobtrusive as it is attractive, leading to a very high volume of click-throughs. The Twitter revenue model would do well to duplicate the successes of a company built on its platform.

Investment justification

It is believed the platform will launch in conjunction with several companies at the SXSW festival next month. The big pay off for investors who have poured over $100 million into the company may well be around the corner if the Twitter ad platform is well received.