Twitter To Add Money-Making Features 89
dreemteem writes "Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told reporters in Mexico City this week that the company expects to add revenue-generating features to the micro-blogging site in the fourth quarter, according to a report from Bloomberg.com."
Re:It was about time... (Score:3, Interesting)
I've never understood how Social Networking sites made enough money off of JUST advertising. Maintaining a website once it reaches popularity is a costly venture.
I think the idea is that you don't have to generate any content. It's "social networking" - so your users generate all their own content by chattering away at eachother.
You need to supply bandwidth/servers/storage/whatever, but not content.
I still find it hard to believe that anyone can make enough money from advertising along to support something the size of these sites...
Re:What is this dashboard thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
The article didn't seem to mention it, but from what I have seen elsewhere, not all information that twitter has is available with the free api. It could be stuff like who is actually reading the tweets (rather that just followers), where they are, where the people tweeting about you are, standard analytic stuff that business really like to know.
I can see this being quite popular and making plenty of money for them.
Another money making option... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Astroturfers Wanted (Score:3, Interesting)
Not an unreasonable area of interest.
The company for which I work produces a product which does appeal greatly to hipsters.
We get tweeted about A LOT.
In our case, most tweets are of "zomg - these guys rock" nature - but if there was a sudden air of negativity, we'd want to know about it right away.
Re:It was about time... (Score:3, Interesting)
Google is.
And this makes me wonder what the disconnect is. Since it's correct that Network television has much higher costs than any website, and yet in many cases has fewer advertising eyes than major websites. (Especially when you consider tivo and people wandering off to get a coffee in ad breaks)
Which leads me to consider that TV advertising is probably vastly over inflated, and overrated, and that web advertising -- should someone take the time to do it in a contextual, non-invasive and entertaining way -- it vastly undervalued and underrated.
I suspect the advertising industry itself is really to blame for its own shortsightedness. It really should be possible, and easy for anyone with a reasonably successful website to hook up with advertisers with ease and fear of annoying their site visitors, and transforming their website into a flashing, flickering spawn of hell.
But as long as the industry is trusting flawed rankings like Nielsen and Alexa, there won't be much change.
This change needs to happen - urgently. By making this happen, it will help end piracy and the ridiculous cartel that is the music industry and film distribution. Content can be set free.
Re:It was about time... (Score:3, Interesting)
One issue is exclusivity.
A well produced tv advert on a major channel conveys a message of "we are a big stable company who can afford to make a good quality advert and buy expensive TV time to show it". That message is somewhat reassuring to customers. Not saying big companies are angels but at least there is likely to be someone left to complain to/sue when your product doesn't turn up or turns out to be faulty.
Whereas with internet advertising adverts from reputable firms are mixed in with adverts from companies that are frankly outright scammers and often are outside your jurisdiction making them very difficult to go after legally.
Another issue is the targetting sucks, I see adverts that are clearly aimed at americans all the time on slashdot, can't they seem i'm coming from british IP addresses?!
Re:It was about time... (Score:3, Interesting)
I work in the business, and you're right, budgets for TV advertising are generally out of all proportion to the results they generate. It's one of the big frustrations of producing advertising-related websites - clients are not only stingy with the budgets, but they want chapter and verse on exactly what they're getting for their money. Whereas with TV, they'll piss millions up the wall on bloated follies just because they like the concept. If a website fails (and let's face it, most do), you'll have a hard job ever selling another one to them, whereas with TV, they just keep coming back for more.
I think the reasons for this are complex, but it's partly historical - TV ad budgets are massive because they've always been massive, and they haven't fully adjusted to the fact that their audiences have mostly vanished. We don't sit around in our tens of millions watching a couple of channels any more. We're spread across dozens of them, and that's if we're in the house at all - increased prosperity means that people can afford to go out more. And even when we are watching, we'll skip the ads if at all possible. Or just not bother with the broadcasts and buy/download stuff to watch at our leisure. The consumer is fully in control nowadays.
And yet here's the web, where the fact that the consumer is in control is its main virtue, but budgets are relatively tiny. I think that for the most part the industry's still figuring out how to consistently pull in eyeballs, and also how to charge for those eyeballs once they have them. It's just hard to persuade clients that they're getting value for money, even though in my view, if you can actually persuade a user to come and have a look around your website, that's infinitely more valuable than the televisual blunderbuss approach to getting your message out there to the passive masses who mostly just want you to go away so they can get back to watching the show.
It'll change one day. It has to. TV nowadays has much less to offer as an advertising medium than the web.