Pallian Creative

There’s been a lot of chatter recently on how twitter can monetize. Comments range from inserting text link ads between tweets to charging companies who use it for marketing purposes - but, I don’t believe twitter will actually implement any of these. Twitter is smart enough to recognize that pursuing traditional advertising models will not work with it’s 140 characters or less attention span users. And with over $35 million in venture capital money, twitter is not really in any hurry to start monetizing either.

But say, they were to begin monetizing today, here are three possible scenarios I believe will work best for them and the community in general:

1. Twitter Search Analytics - currently, twitter search is one of the most useful and powerful sites out there. My startup Tweetizen actually uses the twitter search extensively to help create and embed groups, and we have some great analytics in place to keep track of demographics. Similarly, if Twitter is keeping track of it’s search analytics, they can potentially sell this information to large corporations who’re actively looking to market to the twitter generation. When I mean analytics, I’m talking age and demographics - not actual tweets. As an advertising corporation, I wouldn’t mind paying for this data since it helps target future ads campaigns.

2. Sponsored Groups on Twitter - Twitter currently does not have any grouping capabilities (another reason why i started Tweetizen). But say they did have it, then similar to facebook, Twitter can charge corporations to create specialized groups and sub-groups to manage outgoing tweets. For example, say I was Pepsi Corp, by sponsoring a group on twitter, I get to create sub-groups where I can send out different tweets to target different audiences in different subgroups - and not just be limited to sending the 1 universal tweet. Read & Discuss

Twitter is literally EVERYWHERE these days! I was watching hulu the other night, and someone mentioned on some random show that Darth Vader was on twitter! Darth Vader?! Did a little google search and sure enough, @darthvader is definitely on twitter - and with over 53k followers! That got me thinking, how many users are out there on twitter who use it primarily to read tweets (from fictional amusing characters like Darth Vader) and not necessarily participate in the 140 character bandwagon? I did some stats testing on Tweetizen and I was surprised that even though there was an increase in traffic and a ton of grouping activity going on, not a lot of tweets were being sent out. I can see how Twitter, to someone new, can be a great resource to find quick real-time information on a topic they are interested in, but not necessarily ready to share their personal up to the minute status updates.

This is technically good news for us, since we want more people to embrace the twitter culture. And even though they may not necessarily be twittering about what they are doing any given minute, they are using it as a real-time information source to find news and trends happening NOW. Which brings me to the next point - how about having the capability to bring this real-time streaming news and trends to your own website?

Until now, websites could only install plugins or widgets that were one directional. Tweetizen aims to change this. We’ll be launching a series of plugins and widgets that will make it possible for any site or blog to easily embed a group of tweets that are relevant to the topic of the site. Read & Discuss