I was not alone in predicting serious problems for Twitter. ReadWriteWeb asks a simple question: how could Twitter ever make money? I do have some suggestions:

  • Sell the company to eBay. If they were interested in Skype, surely Twitter would offer them better value for money. Instant twitter updates when you receive a bid, a Twitter channel for each product category, et cetera.
  • Offer ads on people’s Twitter page. Make this a shared-revenue model so you avoid irritating users: make users receive a percentage of the ad revenue generated from their page.
  • Start charging for receiving SMS updates. 
  • Make money from people submitting updates via SMS. Get a special “SMS-Update” number that people can send updates to, have the mobile operators charge $0.25 for each message, share in the revenue. 
  • Offer “premium” Twitter channels that people can only follow if they pay for them. Some suggestions:
    • Weather reports
    • Alerts when stocks go up/down/pass a certain value
YARPP