Image via WikipediaMark Hopkins over at Mashable has a post up titled "Renting Twitter: Path to Profitability?". The basic concept of the post is to sell the twitter user's background and profile picture to advertisers. While this isn't a particularly original idea, it also isn't much of a viable model. In the words of Twitter's own Evan Williams,
Thanks for the idea. I'm not particularly optimistic about this as an overall business model for Twitter. For one thing, the percentage of users whom this would apply to is very tiny. Twitter is meant to be a communications tool for the masses. We love the Scobles and other power users, but they're kind of anomolies (by definition). The the percentage of these users who wanted to do this is even smaller -- and Twitter's share of that is smaller yet. And that's assuming this model even works.
That said, we're cool with people monetizing their own use of Twitter, in general (as long as they're above-board about it). Because it's all opt-in, if people are annoyed or not getting value, unfollow is easy.
As a side note, and for the record, while we don't mind the community brainstorming, we're not in desperate search for a business model. We have some ideas we'll try out when the time is right, but Twitter isn't going to go away for lack of one any time soon (nor will reliability issues be solved with one).
Lastly, please stop perpetuating the "Scoble is the reason that Twitter is failing" myth. We've not said that. Our system has been the problem -- and we're working on it! :)
Thanks.
What I like about this comment from Evan is that he recognizes that the time to monetize twitter is not right now. Here are the problems with monetizing right now:
1) Twitter is broken
Until Twitter gets the bugs worked out in their architecture, advertisers are going to show very little interest in an always down service. Imagine the cost structure of television ads if the more people were watching in your time slot, the more likely the channel would turn off! Superbowl ads would be worthless! This is Twitter's current status, and I am not impressed by their uptime during WWDC yesterday, considering they turned off/limited many features just to keep it from all blowing up.
2) Twitter isn't popular enough
I really don't think microblogging has reached the critical mass--or tipping point as web geeks like to say--that is required to make business models based on reaching large numbers of people, regularly, viable. And I assume that any advertising based model for twitter is predicated on these requirements. This all feeds into, I think, my most important point...
3) The first to monetize is the first to lose its users
Twitter faces competition from a number of different services. None of these services are monetized right now. They are all completely dedicated to their users, and users like this. They are used to it. If twitter becomes the first mover on monetization, and if that monetization is even the least bit invasive, users will flock to alternative services, or at least try them out. And who knows, they may be better! In which case, users will stay.
So, my recommendation to Twitter:
Check yo'self before you wreck yo'self, foo.
