Biz Stone on Twitter: No ads
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said at the Reuters Technology Summit on Monday that the ubiquitous microblogging start-up isn't considering an advertising-based business model at all.
The whole "we'll make money by offering corporate accounts of some sort" mantra has been talked about by Twitter's founders quite a bit recently. But until this point, Stone and co-founder Evan Williams haven't been quite this explicit in ruling out advertising altogether.
"There are a few reasons why we're not pursuing advertising--one is, it's just not quite as interesting to us," Stone said at the event.
Man, it sure is nice to be so high in Silicon Valley's pecking order that you can rule out a business model just because it's boring!
The other reason: Hiring an ad sales staff is labor-intensive, Stone told Reuters. Ads can also be intrusive to users. Now that makes a bit more sense.
The long-awaited Twitter business model, which the Reuters article describes as "various add-on tools and services for the businesses and professional users of Twitter," should be in effect by the end of the year.
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
That said, this is a terribly arrogant viewpoint for Twitter to have. Their technology isn't special. There's quite frankly nothing keeping them from being micro-blogging's version of Friendster -- if the crowd just chooses to move on... If nothing else, they should be monetizing search. It's such low hanging fruit and users are already used to encountering ads in search thanks to the fact that every search engine does it...
Here's an idea:
In the UK, everyone who has a TV must pay an annual TV licences. A portion of this goes to funding the BBC, which in turn is broadcast free to air, without any ads. They also have a charter ensuring a certain breadth of coverage (i,e they need to make education programs). Anyone who has watched much TV in the UK will know that the BBC produces some very high quality television. People love to complain about the TV licence, but they get a unique, world class TV service in return (including the well respected BBC News).
So, why not create a body that collects an equivalent fee from internet users (the ISPs can collect this), and then use this to fund a number services on the internet that provide a high quality service following an agreed mandate.
I'm sure the capitalists here will object, but I dont want to be battered with ads everytime I use the internet, and there is a noticable absense of any over viable business model for this kind of service.
This country is founded on people getting their way, or being able to influence others to get their way. So the "agreed mandate" would probably change every time there is a change in which political party has more power.
Politics has a way of controlling people based on a "fear" or "moral," which is many times based on religion, except they find a way to claim it is based on something else to get around separation of church and state.
Basically, for choosing what people can be entertained by, I would not trust the government or the political process. Keep them focused on laws.
PBS has some great shows, but how many do you watch?
Buying the Discovery Channel programming and DVDs is probably the best way to get a similar experience.
Capitalism will charge the highest amount for the lowest quality. The only way to change this is if people start to demand more quality. Enough people are fine with reality TV, so the "quality" and operational cost of programming has dropped considerably, but TV and cable rates have gone up.
Using government to keep a fair playing field is the best way to use government in a capitalistic society. (This is much more effective the more educated the public is.) When Time Warner was going to use monthly caps on internet service, enough people complained and started to get the government involved, so that TW stopped. The public thought this was an anti-competitive fee levied on people who wanted to choose their programming rather than what TW chose for them. TW could not prove otherwise, and had to drop the fee.
Just like cell phone text messages have gone up in cost, but they are easier to implement for the carrier than even voice calls. So enough people have gotten Congress to start to look into price gouging.
Just like Blockbuster Video in California was actually charging customer credit cards more than the marked sticker price on items, so the government got involved.
The reason that public air wave radio stations have weather and traffic is because they are required to have some percentage of air time as a public service.
the true value of twitter is that it has created a new 'form' for people to communicate. by restricting the character count, as SMS also does, twitter emphasises speed and continuity, which fits perfectly in today's ocean of never ending, always-on information society.
What a colossal idiot to not start monetizing this thing before people get even more sick of it.
I already killed my Twitter account because the service had all the blinding performance of running off DDOS'd 286mhz servers.
With a 60% attrition rate after the first month, Twitter maybe has 6 months before the great exodus of users to the next (better) fad.
selfkill above got it right. they fooled a bunch of VCs, now those VCs are trying to trick some giant company into buying twitter. Maybe they won't lose as much money as youtube, but they're not going to make any.
- by akky_akimoto May 20, 2009 1:15 AM PDT
- They have been testing ads to Japanese users, which is one of the biggest languages on twitter.
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