A Few Other Ways Twitter Can Generate Revenue

Now that a Facebook takeover of Twitter for a reported US$500-million is apparently off the table, the microblogging service can resume its pursuit of a business model.

At least, I hope that’s what Biz Stone and co. are doing now that a deep and probably recession has cast an ugly shadow over the world.

In any case, CNet writer Rafe Needleman posted a decent list of revenue-generating ideas Twitter may want to consider.

He started with the obvious (e.g. sell advertising) and came up with a few fairly original ideas too including one that’d see popular Tweeters charge others to follow them. (A novel concept but i’m not sure it’d fly).

Another business brainwave, which is apparently the leading Twitter revenue generation candidate according to chief executive Evan Williams, is to sell enterprise-grade services such as security and logging services. This has some legs in my mind.

I have at least three other ways Twitter could generate revenue which build off Needleman’s ideas to some degree. They are as follows:

1) Web 2.0 consulting services. Yes people are expensive and the recession is upon us. But Web 2.0 is still a hot topic and it’s a mystery to most business types. These factors make consulting services a potential first revenue stream or lead generation tool for the folks at Twitter. There’s a need that’s currently unfilled by the cottage industry of social media experts and consultants right now. Try talking to someone at a big Canadian bank about social networks or Web 2.0 applications some time. The responses will surprise you. Why can’t the fine folks at Twitter take their show on the road? Who’s a more credible as a web 2.0 expert? In other words, train interested parties at various companies how to use and potentially exploit the service for their own means. There’s a potential upsell opportunity over time. Anyway, it’ll get the ball rolling for Twitter with enterprises and give the company a target list of sorts once it actually has a service or product to sell.

2) Hosted microblogging platforms. This isn’t so much an original idea given comments by Twitter about possible ideas to actually generate a top line. Having said that, it may behoove Twitter to develop some sort of enterprise-grade service if it’s going to wring money out of a line of business or a corporate IT department. It’ll be veering into shark-infested waters at this point as the collaboration software seas are full of players ready to feast on any deal possible. But I digress. Twitter does have a new take on things and will be welcomed by many a company given that it has quickly established itself as the authority on microblogging, the practice most of us many of us know as a message in 140 characters or less.

3) Skype-like telephony. Why can’t I connect with other users via voice when using Twitter? It wouldn’t be huge revenue stream but I’d love to be able to connect to merchants or other users on impulse. Perhaps Twitter could charge people on a per call or subscription basis. It could be in effect, a second or third line for a person.

4) E-commerce fulfillment. Help people buy on impulse. In other word, take advantage of human nature. Tens of thousands are joining Twitter monthly. Among the new Twitterers are celebrities and others who want to tell the world about the products they’re using. Have a ‘buy it now’ option beside each tweet for those that want to take advantage of someone’s product recommendation.

These are of course rough ideas and much harder to implement but still worth considering. But I don’t believe the platform is inherently unmonetizable (is that even a word?)

Any other Twitter revenue generation ideas out there? What do you think of my ideas?

[tags] Facebook, Twitter, microblogging, Web 2.0 [/tags]