Well, for starters, I don't think it's a bad idea to offer corporate accounts, which could offer analytics, etc. That's a good one that won't clutter the screen with ads. - Kris

yeah, not a bad idea at all there Kris - Zee.

I am not sure there is any value for anyone to want to advertise on Twitter. I am never on the site since I use TweetDeck...and there are thousands like me who use it so when would they see any of the ads on Twitter? - Scot Duke

Being on Twitter is more powerful than advertising on Twitter. Spamming on Twitter is def not cool but perhaps permission-based advertising would be acceptable in exchange for additional benefits (increased follower limit). I am sure most people would accept ads vs pay for premium. - Ben Watson from twhirl

The real value of Twitter for companies and their customers is that they get instant feedback on their products and vice versa. I just have to say one bad thing about a brand, and I get a rep talking to me about it (from Skype to 37signals). It's like Getsatisfaction, except distributed. Ironically, twitter-search made that happen. - Vincent van Wylick

It will be very hard to find a revenue stream for Twitter. It has a lot of competition, e.g. Plurk. - imabonehead

adsense for twitter. they're testing it in japan, and you see elements of it in the realtime election stuff. - Andrew Badera

the trick to finding a revenue stream without losing the customer base is to find a way to provide service to corporate customers without affecting the user experience for the individual. I'll think more on this. - Zach Landes

license it to the corporate world so they can build their own bespoke implementations as well as a corporate hosting solution - doesn't impact the service they host to users and gives them a solid revenue stream. Maybe look into exchange/sharepoint integration? - alphaxion

chuck in the odd "sponsored tweet". People will kick up a stink for a little while but pownce seems to do it ok. And its the only sensible way to monetize their API. - Anthony Feint

It will either be via consolidating trending topics and selling that off somehow - most likely to search company that wants to incorporate it to their page - also if they can work it just think of the possibility for target marketing. They know what their subscribers talk about --- so it should be easy to send advertising that is on topic. - Wayne Schulz

I haven't the faintest idea how Twitter can make money - I bet they wish they had thought of Yammer, though. But I guess we all know there is a window in time, a sweet spot, where something should and needs to develop out of a product so that it doesn't lose its attractiveness. Twitter seems to have crossed the 'drowning whale - twitter overload' problem that killed it as a serious product. - david

Actually, I just thought of something. A twitter page that is a collection of mini browser windows, all clickable, and the mini windows earn their place on that page in some sort of popularity thing like Digg uses. Oh yes, and how to earn money from it - have a sponsored column of minis down one side of the page. - david

I'm quite concerned that no-one is looking outside of finding ways to crowbar in advertising. Maybe licensing a corporate API to allow an easy way of getting corporate news, press releases and updates out to people. Imagine a system where a hardware manufacturer or software developer uploads a new version of drivers or software and/or a patch and it immediately gets tweeted out. Follow the corporate tweet stream and keep up to date with freshly released items and news. - alphaxion

while it would be in competition with RSS feeds, integration into corporate sites could make it an interesting way of pushing out info to people. Mix things like FF and you can even see a history of comments on it to see if people have problems with it. - alphaxion

Premium access/content is a when, not if, scenario online. - Patricia

@alphaxion there are those of us who are looking at non-advertising revenue models, but we're not going to put them out there. Advertising isn't really working for anyone but Google, and will be very recession-sensitive. - Jason Carreira

@jason, everybody should have known that about advertising long ago and built sites specifically with ancillary revenue baked in. It's a no brainer. - Patricia

@jason I was referring to the suggestions in the thread - got no idea what others outside of the thread are thinking off and I'm sure there has been plenty of suggestions for other means to generate a real revenue stream. I've made a couple in this thread that are real means of monetising the technology. I even submitted them to the twitter feedback system. - alphaxion

I'm saying you're not going to get people contributing innovative revenue models here, 'cause people will just use them instead. - Jason Carreira

Twitter is essentially a communications platform (utility). The web IMO based on what it's designed to do (as a technology itself) will mean sites will either be a utility (communications, ecommerce, etc.) or entertainment (blog/media, TV, games) - given this, communications platforms will probably eventually monetize by charing fees - not just for access to core services but premium ones as well - as communications companies do now on other platforms (landline, cell). It'll take a long time for people's minds in the business to evolve to this. People used to think social networking was the killer thing - now it's just a feature. Many knew that all along :) - Patricia

the suggestions I made are just generic ones that aren't really innovative - they're pretty much standard software business models, so I had no problem mentioning them ;) I could imagine the more innovative suggestions wouldn't be mentioned here, but I at least expected a few more standard IT business models to be hinted at here. - alphaxion

alphaxion your suggestions in fact are overly generic: twitter is just XMPP. the only thing Twitter has going for it on top of XMPP is its userbase/popularity. thus, advertising. - Andrew Badera

andrew: but the web needs to ditch advertising as a means of generating money because it's a flawed business model. Licensing their software for bespoke deployments and then maybe charging extra for federating the systems to the rest of the twitter network is quite viable in my eyes. Maybe even make the federation charge a subscription model so in order to keep connected to the twitter userbase you have to pay a recurring CAL. Don't want to pay? fine, one off deployment that is internal to your company. - alphaxion

with a yearly support contract as an extra. Constant revenue streams by harnessing your userbase on the free version. Paid version allows bespoke integration that goes further than the public API is possible of. - alphaxion

alphaxion, agreed. people hear "Online ad revenues are XYZ growing" and think that it's enough but it isn't. I think we are a long way away from the problems to make it truly work. - Patricia

patricia: my concerns with the dependance upon ad revenues are that it demands constant growth to keep profits going (so you're limiting your earning potential as the market matures) and the issue that ads soon over take the real content people came for in the first place - look at TV, it's rapidly approaching a 50/50 split between content and ads with people turning away because of it. Advertising should ALWAYS be an afterthought, not your only revenue stream. - alphaxion

alphaxion, brilliant, brilliant point. can you come hang out with me? :) i wish more people were in the market like you. :) i owned a social media company for 3 years + ad revenue was the intended ancillary revenue stream, not the main source - sold it before we got there, but totally agree. Brilliant point! - Patricia

but it's not an easy problem to remedy. It's far easier to say "don't use advertising" than to come up with a solution. :( It's the nettle someone is gonna have to grasp at some point tho, otherwise the net will collapse back to the dialup age when it comes to content and cool things you can do with it! - alphaxion

alphaxion: don't agree that advertising is a flawed business model, a mature market just requires creative marketing innovations. However I do agree that it should be a last resort, especially for a company like Twitter. They'll never monetize with advertising. Think about it-Google search matches advertising with searches. Search for a Garmin nuvi PND and you'll get search results and highly targeted advertising. But Twitter? People are there for personal interaction. They WON'T CLICK! - Justin Davey

@justin, do you own a startup? - Patricia

alphaxion what do you suggest they license? xmpp? fail. I don't disagree that advertising is not a sustainable model, nor am I saying that it _should_ be the primary/only model, but please put more analysis into what you're saying before saying it, it just doesn't make any sense. - Andrew Badera

Justin -- plenty of people use Twitter to seek advice. Contextual advertising has serious potential. Think about the recent Summize purchase. - Andrew Badera

One thing I don't get: why is the twittersphere freely searchable and accessible. The information in those tweets seems like it could well be very valuable and yet twitter is giving anyone who feels like it access to that information for free. - Zach Landes

Just because it's open now, doesn't mean it won't close later. And, the search capabilities are pretty basic right now -- imagine a richer search/reporting/trend researching/numbers crunching interface that allows you to build ad campaigns to match current dominant or rising trends? - Andrew Badera

One thing is for sure: they are not going to close anything off that the masses will use. It will either be premium services for companies and/or adverts for everyone. - Vincent van Wylick

On it's own Twitter would find it difficult to find a revenue model. They have the option of advertising and the premium services option. Another alternative would be to establish partnerships with mobile phone companies so that they improve the social network side in a mobile phone, plus providing some of the productivity tools like when you could use the service to (at least no longer free outside America) to post to Remember the milk and other similar services. - Cibeles