In the last week (pretty much since this hoax), blogs have been awash with speculation about Twitters long awaited business plan.
The most commonly promoted idea is a paid for premium account that would offer some form of expanded functionality; like unlimited API credits or more characters per message. While I have no doubt that online marketers would snap up these features only a tiny percentage of normal users would be interested.
Whatever Twitters business plan is I think its unlikely to be based on added functionality, doing so could create two classes of user and risk alienating the very users responsible for its massive growth.
Twitter must think big if it is to avoid the problems that Facebook and Myspace have had monetizing their audiences. If I had to bet on it I would put my money on some form of contextual advertising based on your message history.
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My name is Christopher Lee and I'm co-founder of the questions & answers community
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My take – forget, pay per click – how about pay per follower? (looks like they are testing it already with the top right adspace)
Twitter doesn’t need the majority of its users to use it, but only a small percentage of business users (like Google, millions of users never pay them a penny)
Target people interested in “Keyword Subject” (matched by context and/or history)
Cost Per Follower – $0.50
Twitter then works out an effective CPM and the highest CPM gets the slots.
(Or target by profile on a pure CPM)