Is Biz Stone nuts? At yesterday’s Reuters Global Technology Summit, the Twitter co-founder said the company is exploring revenue streams from services and enhancement that it hopes businesses and professional Twitter users would buy. As for ads, he said, “There are a few reasons why we’re not pursuing advertising — one is it’s just not quite as interesting to us.” He added:”There are no people at Twitter who know anything about advertising or work in advertising. So we don’t have anyone there to make or take those calls.” (Reuters)
Hmm, I know a few hundred folks who are champing at the bit to take those calls … the same ones who debate endlessly about what Twitter’s revenue model should be. Were Stone’s remarks just posing? Would he REALLY turn down ad revenue simply because no one at Twitter could take a few calls? Is he REALLY willing to fork over that ad revenue to the myriad companies that are sprouting up to create ad models for Twitter? Or is he onto something: that advertising, no matter how many calls came in, wouldn’t be enough to sustain the company?
Very strange, indeed. As for that revenue stream from services, well, that’s a tough one as well. In the Reuters article Stone mentions “lightweight analytics” and a directory that would make it easy to tell which Twitter accounts were legit. Those seem ho-hum to me, but maybe I’m missing something.
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