Twitter Wants to Know What You’re Doing

In case you didn’t know, the Washington Post has an I.T. blog that they launched in early 2007 where they discuss all the new innovations relating to technology. They dub it as a “user’s guide to the 21st century.”

There was a posting on July 31 where they talked about this new start-up company called Twitter. From what I gathered from this article, it appeared that there was some question about how Twitter was managing to fund its operations. Right now, you can upload some code to your webpage and then text message the Twitter system and let your viewers know what you’re doing right now. However, what is the source of funds and how can revenue be generated? A fair question…

The social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook are easy to understand how money is generated – practically through online advertising as these sites can leverage their monthly site traffic which probably amounts to millions a month, if not yearly. However, as pointed out in the Washington Post article, Twitter is still an emerging technology. If anything, there are always ways for the company to develop another means of generating revenue to capitalize on Twitter’s popularity.

Here are some possible ideas: why not continue with the current process BUT on the websites where the Twitter module resides, place targeted ads on their websites – very similar to Google AdSense. Why not do “Twitter AdSense”? These could be ads that appear in-between a series of text messages that you would send via your cell phone?

Or, why not have Twitter utilize its enormous client database and send text message ads to them and be paid by various companies – also based on their interests? Twitter doesn’t necessarily need to be the sole revenue generator for the company. Instead, can’t it be the gateway to new technology developed by the company that will result in another application that will help to bring in money?