What would a monetized Twitter look like?

[Jim_S]

A cause of great consternation to the folks who use popular social sites like Twitter is the inevitable monetization that must come, at some point -- the problem is, a site like Twitter works best without the clutter of ads or the cost of texting, or software fees. So you have to compromise the quality of the service to keep the service viable.

It is a tough situation.

As a regular Twitter user, both personally and in a marketing capacity, I may be one of the few who looks forward to the day when Twitter has a reasonable pay-to-play structure … because it is a service worth paying for.

Now how would pay-to-play work on Twitter?

Advertising: As a Twitter user, I would not be opposed to receiving ads either on a periodic basis (once every 10 tweets, etc.) or targeted (based on my preferences, location, demographic, etc.), or even a combination of both. For my PC I use a third-party application called Twitterific that delivers my Twitter stream into a separate window. The cost of the software to me is I see an ad every once in awhile. And when I see an ad that appeals to me, I click on it. Good software developers are getting compensated through ad revenue for a product that I receive for free … can’t beat that. Twitter could do it much the same way.

While advertising is the most obvious potential revenue stream for Twitter, it has obviously struggled with when and how to implement – and that may have been the catalyst behind acquisition talks with facebook earlier this year – facebook has a sophisticated ad delivery model that could easily be repurposed for Twitter. I wouldn’t be surprised to see ads on Twitter in 2009.

Other areas that seem like they would have potential is Pro Accounts (kind of a Flickr-type thing), new Community Features to produce site time and page views (for ad delivery), SMS agreements (carriers in the U.S., as in Europe, should really be paying Twitter for all that traffic and revenue it generates), etc.

What do you think? Are you opposed to a monetized Twitter? If not, how should it work?

[Bob Conrad]

The iGoogle gadget BeTwittered also has ads in it.

[Ryan Jerz]

I think Magpie is horrible as a way to monetize. I think Jim is right in that paying for Twitter is acceptable to me. BUT. If it was subscription only, the usefulness would be lost. A shit ton of people would bail and some other app would grab them. The only viable solution that I can see at this point is an ads and premium model. At least one iPhone app (Twitteriffic) uses that model already. My question would be how it works. Would the ads just show up in your stream?

[Mike McDowell]

I could see Twitter being monetized in two ways (that you referred to). I think the "Twitterific" technique of running an ad every ten or twenty tweets. BFD. I could deal with that, and Twitter can get paid.

I think the premium service idea (a la Flickr), is another nice option that I would pay for.

As an aside, I really don't like the Magpie idea, however. I guess I just really don't like the idea of "buying" people's tweets for your ad space. I guess that's because it's a blatant ad masquerading as one of your trusted friend's tweets. It feels like that individual account holder is advocating the product/service being tweeted about (I know, that's the whole point), but that just really rubs me the wrong way.

[Wolfy]

pay for groups, pay for no adds, use up empty space at the end of short tweets for add links, create a web cart that uses twitter to make transactions, services like the fed ex tracker that are either pay for use or pay for access, charge businesses for accounts, Run ads on the website, but leave the txt free and clear...

-M

[Jim_S]

More: http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/10/twitter-to-get.html