

Twitter Takes Step Toward Commercial Accounts - physcab
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/twitter-takes-a-step-toward-commercial-accounts/?hp

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RyanMcGreal
It's a little mysterious how Twitter manages to stay in business now, given
that they don't seem to charge anyone for anything.

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nir
They're in business with the money they raised. The fact that putting up a few
content pages nets them an NY Times story probably doesn't hurt attracting
further investment..

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RyanMcGreal
Yes, that's what makes me nervous. I remember back in 1999 listening to a
startup CFO saying her company was having cash-flow problems and needed more
VC funding, and thinking that what they really needed was a _revenue stream_.
(That was when I realized with a clunk that the dot com bubble's days were
numbered.)

Twitter has been remarkably successful at attracting a huge community of users
and developers for their service, but sooner or later they're going to have to
find a way to monetize that - without alienating the huge user base on which
any viable monetizing plan must depend.

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michaelfairley
Currently, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are all in the red. They have
enormous value because of their _potential_ to make gobs of cash due to the
amount of eyes that look at them everyday. The problem during the dot-com
boom/bust was that ideas that were basically crap (aka. had no real users, nor
much potential to get them) were getting wayyyy too much money, and were often
being started and led by business types who thought they could just hire some
programmers and their ideas would spring to life and make them infinitely
rich. FB/YT/Twitter are all in a very different position and actually have
potential to make their investors infinitely rich in the not too distant
future.

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RyanMcGreal
_FB/YT/Twitter ... have potential to make their investors infinitely rich in
the not too distant future._

Yes, but _how_? And what is stopping them from doing it already?

 _Edit:_ I understand that Google is working on algorithms that will let them
parse content from videos so they can include targeted ads (I've heard it
suggested that Google's free 411 service is an exercise in collecting speech
samples for just this purpose).

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nir
Facebook and YouTube have a lot of user who spend a lot of time there. This at
least makes an ad model possible. Twitter does not have that, especially
considering how long it's been around (it was launched about 6 months after
YouTube) and how unbelievably overhyped it is, and a large share of the users
it does have are spam accounts.

Only time will tell, but I think along with "make their investors infinitely
rich in the not too distant future" there's also a strong option of
"completely forgotten in the not too distant future".

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crcoffey
It's still blows my mind in exactly how popular Twitter has become.

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theklub
Consider how much publicity they get.

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crcoffey
But thats my point. Why?

Twitters entire concept is just a head spin, As a casual bystander to the twit
phase, I gather that 90% of the posts are either ego trips, basic daily
occurrences, spam or marketing.

Why can't you meet your friends for coffee instead of twittering them about it
from Starbucks.

P.S: Sent from my iphone.

