Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Where Is Heading Twitter ?


I have always been a big user of Twitter, which is actually my favorite social media. Nevertheless, and for quite a while, I have been wondering about their business model and their ability to generate long term revenues.

One figure comes up to my mind. Twitter has 100 million users. It is a pretty large base, and it makes it one of the most used social media in the market. But when you pay a close attention to this figure, Twitter is by far smaller than Facebook, and on an international scale, it remains small. Will it be enough to become an unquestionable media?

To me, the question is not solved yet. I have learned recently that Twitter is still raising funds in order to develop their advertising platform. It is for sure a very important step they are taking. They now focus all their efforts on developing this needed business model, and achieve profitability. But it has been several months that they are working on it, and still, it is unclear if they have really made any progress.

Twitter is a new medium. And most of the new medium, like television or radio, have started by providing great quality program before becoming profitable. Eventually it works. Twitter has no questioned change the way we consume information. Twitter it also changes the way we interact on the Internet. And it really brings added value to the user.

Twitter suits well for:
¨     Accessing information fast on a mobile device thanks to its short text messages
¨     Being informed to the most recent news.
¨     Interact with others who share the same interests.

But once again, Twitter really needs to find a way to monetize its service, otherwise its system may have no future.

I think they should have focused on this point right from the beginning, as it would have been easier afterwards to adapt the platform to advertisements.