Twitter's Business Model? … Here’s 5 possible ideas.

Tweet

Over the last week or two Twitter has added new functions like “lists” and the “retweet” button but still no word on how they will make money from their worldwide popularity.

There has been much speculation on how Twitter will eventually monetise it’s service. Clearly the people who invested $100M for 10% have been told and clearly they were impressed.

When a service has 20M+ users and very small costs (consider that Facebook now stores billions of Photos and Videos while Twitter is mostly lines of text) they don’t need to make a lot of money of each user before the money starts to pile up.

So here are 5 predictions of mine on how Twitter might make it’s fortune.

1. Twitter does a Search Advertising Deal with Google

Google’s current search facility focuses on delivering important information about what you have searched for. Twitters search gives you the latest thoughts on what you have searched for.

In the future, when you do a twitter search for the latest Disney Movie, you will have an ad off to the side allowing you to buy tickets, toys, music etc just like in Google.

NOTE: The other option is that Twitter does a deal with Facebook to place their targeted ads somewhere on twitter based upon the key words found in your tweets.

2. Twitter Charges for Verified Business Accounts

Dell has famously touted its ability to generate millions by using twitter to reach its customers. In the future Dell might have to pay for this privilege by having a “Verified Business Account” which features highly in the directory and allows the business to build in advanced features (maybe clickable banners in their background).

3. Ad Tweets

You’re skimming through your friends updates and smack bang in the middle is a tweet from someone you are NOT following. It’s Twadvertising! They throw a random tweet into the mix about a new fan-dangle MP3 playing toaster. If you click the link the advertiser just got deducted $0.40 for it.

4. Back Your Life Up

“Grandma, what were you like when you were a teenager?” … Forget listening to Nana tell her stories, now you can read her tweets from when she was just a girl because Nana paid to Back-Up her tweets. Non-payers could still use Twitter for free but their tweets will be deleted after 30 days never to be seen again *tear*.

5. Twitter Polls

If twitter is about collecting peoples thoughts and opinions in a real time environment then naturally there is no better place to conduct market research. Users could be asked to quickly respond to questions that appear in amongst their tweets.

BONUS 6! … Twitter has no idea but trusts that the users will figure it out

It was the twitterati who invented invented “ReTweeting” and now it has become a new feature. Maybe Twitter has no idea how it will make money but they are busily reading blogs like this one looking for the answers… Kinda like the ultimate Social Media experiment.

What are your thoughts?