Twitter has been giving away more and more ground to Facebook. Facebook groups are not even suited for a lot of things that they have become and twitter should have been there. Twitter needs to look at what the use cases are:
- Customer Support, twitter is customer support for a lot of companies and being public makes grievance redressal possible. They just need to get better tools and charge companies for being their support interface. The companies may not have choices.
- Events. Twitter is the heart of events. Create tools to manage public events and charge for them. Give something to the organizers and take money for it.
- Pages. Give an alternative business model to facebook. Its too big to fight right now. Give a paid version of facebook pages with a promise of not losing organic growth. Brands spent a lot on getting tons of likes that are not useful any more. Followers are still somewhat valuable. Make pages interesting for brands (give them something to justify the payment).
- Advertising is not always the solution. Customize for the key use cases.
- Open up. Facebook is the AOL of social. Someone needs to step up and be as open as the internet. Aren't you suffocating behind the closed doors? Did you really have a reason for closing them?
I would pay for a TweetDeck subscription. They have consistently acquired products and have ignored them. It is a shame they don't invest more resources on TweetDeck. I am just an end user and I find TweetDeck to be one of the only sane ways to use Twitter. I simply cannot imagine how beneficial TweetDeck would be as a tool for someone who does marketing/handles brands.
A recommended tweets/articles tab a la Pocket's recommendations feed would also bring in a lot of customers for their promoted tweets. The problem isn't ads/sponsored tweets, its how poorly Twitter chooses to present them.
The customer support tools is a great idea. Twitter should optimize for how their users are actually using Twitter.
Other ideas:
- "Enterprise Twitter" for private communications and sharing status updates. Something like Yammer or Facebook at Work or even Slack, though big companies might not want a consumer brand associated with "goofing off" inside their enterprise.
- Flattr-like micropayments to let people "tip" a favorite tweet. This could encourage more people to tweet as a source of income. Like PayPal, Twitter could generate interest off people's tip accounts.
Customer Support, twitter is customer support for a lot of companies and being public makes grievance redressal possible. They just need to get better tools and charge companies for being their support interface. The companies may not have choices.
Twitter support is common in CRM already. The company I work for has it in our products and AFAIK so do many others in the space.
Totally agree. But many/most of the proposed solutions typically involve charging the users for basic usage which is completely stupid for a site/service dependent on widespread user-generated content.
- Pay with your twitter account (we already login).
- Paid tier for advanced users who manage multiple accounts.
- BUY straight off a tweet.
- Sell API access to power users (rate limit tiers).
- Remove ads for a fee.
- Push twitter search, and sell more ads on increased searches.
- Sell themselves to facebook.
These are all pretty obvious, so they must have reasons not so obvious not to do them. One would guess twitter's brainstorm meetings are veto-fests just from their lack of interest in doing anything interesting or progressive... but maybe they just don't sweat it because they're sitting on 3B cash. (that must be it)
Most of these are "tried and failed again and again" attempts that have been "obvious" since 1999.
Sure, they could sell "no ads", "exclusive accounts", "developer tools", etc. None of these will entice enough users to be remotely worth it -- as it hasn't worked in most other platforms.
This is for something at the scale of Basecamp or Automattic to make money, not Twitter.
Here is my vision for twitter: copy the patreon/twitch/kickstarter model which you should of lead from the beginning. Why can't I subscribe to @lebron_james for 5$ a year and get exclusive lebron james emotes that can be used on twitter? Then @lebron_james has giveaways, product bonus codes, exclusive subscriber only tweets etc. Exclusivity is the new product and people will pay for it. Then lebron's social media team actually has something to do, paying customers, and an incentive to increase quality of his presence on twitter.
If people could sub to @lebron_james for 20$ a year and it got me in ticket/product giveaways, fancy lebron james emotes, a free sneak peak at the next kanye album, removed ads when viewing his feed, and the odd exclusive sub only tweet would people do it?
Twitter is a great product that lacks an effective business model. A similarly influential product that has been used widely for many years (Wikipedia) didn't have to deal with this problem because they are a non-profit.
Maybe the only way to save Twitter the product is to kill Twitter the business.
I don't think Twitter will receive the kind of donations Wikipedia does, from either individuals or institutions. The increasingly toxic nature of discourse on Twitter (whether you agree with what people are saying in a particular instance or not, most viewpoints end up being accompanied with death threats and doxing) makes it unlikely they can make a successful case for filling an important need of humanity.
The problem is that if twitter is stripped down to a protocol/platform, you can't really force ads in there. It's something that can be put in clients. That's what got them in trouble before.
Current liquid assets: $4,381,792,000
Net loss for year: $ 521,031,000
Time to live: 8.4 years
Twitter is a public company with one class of stock. It's ripe for a takeover.[1] Market cap is about $11 billion today, so a straight liquidation is out, but a takeover with a downsizing is likely.
Unfortunately, Twitter's user facing technology has been declining in quality. It's too bad because I like twitter a lot. I can report the following issues:
1) many links to deep inside twitter (eg: user's feed or a particular tweet) will actually bring me to my twitter home page.
2) android app destroys the battery. This is true of many social media apps, but unlike facebook, twitter's mobile web app is barely usable. It keeps insisting that I get the native app and it's extremely clunky and slow. Also, many features aren't there, particularly twitter search.
Back when they were more open with their api and there were alternative clients it was a better experience.
I know none of this has anything to do with their lack of a business model. Also, I don't want to discount their contributions with bootstrap and the big data stuff they've done. Hopefully they won't end up like Yahoo.
If there were functioning micro-payments system on the net I suspect this would have turned out a lot different. Customers would be less angry paying $1/month for the service (230M users, ~700M in costs per quarter ~= $1/user/month). They might even be able to cut that by 75% or more if they just stuck to their core competency, which is communications, not advertising.
This conversation has been re-hashed ad nauseum over the past 6 months. My take on it remains the same -- their revenue is fine. They need to reduce costs.
Twitter needs to market itself more as a platform. If HN had "its own twitter" and SO had "its own twitter" and BBC had "its own twitter" I'd probably have accounts on all of them. If those could be aggregated, but still kept independent, even better. There needs to be a layer somewhere between "Twitter" and "user". I still like twitter a lot, but have to admit I'm feeling it less these days.
So the question on my mind after reading these kinds of articles about Twitter on a regular basis for years now is this one:
what does Twitter think the value of Twitter is? do they have an idea but won't say it (vis a vis charging money for it) or do they just not even know?
I'd love a federated alternative to Twitter. If Apple, Google and various Linux people all agreed to bundle a compatible client into their operating systems, it would have a chance at overcoming network effects.
Are you measuring success purely based on last click ROI? Typically social networks don't do that well from a last click standpoint, so you need to look at them through a few different attribution models and path reports (such as those found in GA's attribution tools) to see what's really happening.
As almost everyone is using twitter now a days for some sort of customer support I am wondering why twitter isn't monetizing that aspect. Provide businesses better tools and applications to manage support and charge premium. Similar services can be offered to govts as well.
Different use cases, on Facebook you friend the people you know, on Twitter you follow the people you wish you knew.
Also, news (especially breaking news) and commentary from people who (mostly) know what they are talking about is only on Twitter.
My use case is opposite to yours for example, as most of what is posted on Facebook/Instagram is showing off to your friends and has little informational value.
A whole cottage industry of services exists to improve a power twitter user's experience. The fact that Twitter does not have any significant piece of this pie is surprising.
[+] [-] atishay811|10 years ago|reply
- Customer Support, twitter is customer support for a lot of companies and being public makes grievance redressal possible. They just need to get better tools and charge companies for being their support interface. The companies may not have choices.
- Events. Twitter is the heart of events. Create tools to manage public events and charge for them. Give something to the organizers and take money for it.
- Pages. Give an alternative business model to facebook. Its too big to fight right now. Give a paid version of facebook pages with a promise of not losing organic growth. Brands spent a lot on getting tons of likes that are not useful any more. Followers are still somewhat valuable. Make pages interesting for brands (give them something to justify the payment).
- Advertising is not always the solution. Customize for the key use cases.
- Open up. Facebook is the AOL of social. Someone needs to step up and be as open as the internet. Aren't you suffocating behind the closed doors? Did you really have a reason for closing them?
I know twitter isn't listening.
[+] [-] eigen-vector|10 years ago|reply
A recommended tweets/articles tab a la Pocket's recommendations feed would also bring in a lot of customers for their promoted tweets. The problem isn't ads/sponsored tweets, its how poorly Twitter chooses to present them.
[+] [-] dbbk|10 years ago|reply
They launched better tools in February. http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/article/1384197/twitter-b...
[+] [-] cpeterso|10 years ago|reply
Other ideas:
- "Enterprise Twitter" for private communications and sharing status updates. Something like Yammer or Facebook at Work or even Slack, though big companies might not want a consumer brand associated with "goofing off" inside their enterprise.
- Flattr-like micropayments to let people "tip" a favorite tweet. This could encourage more people to tweet as a source of income. Like PayPal, Twitter could generate interest off people's tip accounts.
[+] [-] slyall|10 years ago|reply
Twitter support is common in CRM already. The company I work for has it in our products and AFAIK so do many others in the space.
[+] [-] pbreit|10 years ago|reply
Totally agree. But many/most of the proposed solutions typically involve charging the users for basic usage which is completely stupid for a site/service dependent on widespread user-generated content.
[+] [-] timrpeterson|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unabst|10 years ago|reply
Per James Altucher, for my 10 ideas a day exercise:
- Pay-to-view, pay-to-subscribe twitter accounts. Exclusivity always sells.
- Twitter tools/analytics for fees.
- Developer tools for fees.
- Pay with your twitter account (we already login).
- Paid tier for advanced users who manage multiple accounts.
- BUY straight off a tweet.
- Sell API access to power users (rate limit tiers).
- Remove ads for a fee.
- Push twitter search, and sell more ads on increased searches.
- Sell themselves to facebook.
These are all pretty obvious, so they must have reasons not so obvious not to do them. One would guess twitter's brainstorm meetings are veto-fests just from their lack of interest in doing anything interesting or progressive... but maybe they just don't sweat it because they're sitting on 3B cash. (that must be it)
[+] [-] coldtea|10 years ago|reply
Sure, they could sell "no ads", "exclusive accounts", "developer tools", etc. None of these will entice enough users to be remotely worth it -- as it hasn't worked in most other platforms.
This is for something at the scale of Basecamp or Automattic to make money, not Twitter.
[+] [-] tibbon|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kmnc|10 years ago|reply
If people could sub to @lebron_james for 20$ a year and it got me in ticket/product giveaways, fancy lebron james emotes, a free sneak peak at the next kanye album, removed ads when viewing his feed, and the odd exclusive sub only tweet would people do it?
[+] [-] cableshaft|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zelias|10 years ago|reply
Maybe the only way to save Twitter the product is to kill Twitter the business.
[+] [-] johncolanduoni|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spangry|10 years ago|reply
As heretical as these sound, I think there are only three ways for Twitter to generate significant profits (and they all carry significant drawbacks):
- start charging for API calls above some threshold (i.e. charge for market research)
- start charging commercial entities based on number of followers (or volume of tweets)
- use adsense (better user data linkability)
tl;dr - Twitter creates significant value. But it's difficult for them to capture at least some of that value as profit (unlike Facebook).
[+] [-] troels|10 years ago|reply
The problem is that if twitter is stripped down to a protocol/platform, you can't really force ads in there. It's something that can be put in clients. That's what got them in trouble before.
[+] [-] hackaflocka|10 years ago|reply
They keep talking about how they were the first at such and such thing. About how they invented this and that thing.
This is the reason why Steve Jobs had the Apple museum removed from 1 Infinite Loop.
They need to start looking at how competition is eating their lunch, instead of living in the past.
[+] [-] Animats|10 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.fastcompany.com/3055735/fast-feed/twitter-is-ripe...
[+] [-] nissimk|10 years ago|reply
1) many links to deep inside twitter (eg: user's feed or a particular tweet) will actually bring me to my twitter home page.
2) android app destroys the battery. This is true of many social media apps, but unlike facebook, twitter's mobile web app is barely usable. It keeps insisting that I get the native app and it's extremely clunky and slow. Also, many features aren't there, particularly twitter search.
Back when they were more open with their api and there were alternative clients it was a better experience.
I know none of this has anything to do with their lack of a business model. Also, I don't want to discount their contributions with bootstrap and the big data stuff they've done. Hopefully they won't end up like Yahoo.
[+] [-] m52go|10 years ago|reply
That tremendously helped my battery usage.
[+] [-] DickingAround|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tamana|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codingdave|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daxfohl|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] junto|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] metaphorm|10 years ago|reply
what does Twitter think the value of Twitter is? do they have an idea but won't say it (vis a vis charging money for it) or do they just not even know?
[+] [-] nsxwolf|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexberman2|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shostack|10 years ago|reply
Are you measuring success purely based on last click ROI? Typically social networks don't do that well from a last click standpoint, so you need to look at them through a few different attribution models and path reports (such as those found in GA's attribution tools) to see what's really happening.
[+] [-] chirau|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] udhan|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|10 years ago|reply
[1] https://consumerist.com/2012/12/06/charter-ends-twitter-and-... [2] http://time.com/3916355/social-media-customer-service/
[+] [-] collyw|10 years ago|reply
I am sure it only gets as much media attention as it does because of the lazy journalism it allows - what's trending, Twitter's reaction, etc.
[+] [-] hobo_mark|10 years ago|reply
Also, news (especially breaking news) and commentary from people who (mostly) know what they are talking about is only on Twitter.
My use case is opposite to yours for example, as most of what is posted on Facebook/Instagram is showing off to your friends and has little informational value.
[+] [-] tamana|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csomar|10 years ago|reply
I wonder how many people are ready to pay for special stuff or accounts on Twitter. Like a "Premium" account, or double highlights, or special sh*t.
But maybe, even if they exist, it is not enough to maintain a multi-billion dollar company.
[+] [-] jetskindo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Negative1|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] netman21|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gherkin0|10 years ago|reply
And then perhaps shut them down...