Twitter CEO: The revenue's coming soon, but I won't tell you how
Evan Williams, godfather of Twitter.
(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)At a Churchill Club event in San Francisco on Tuesday, Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams brushed off--again--criticisms that the company is slow to turn on its revenue-generating engines.
At first, it sounded like Williams was a bit lost on the revenue front. "We will make money, and I can't say exactly how because...we can't predict how the businesses we're in will work." As he has before, he hinted at generating fees from sales-related Twitter content and from corporate users.
But as the conversation went on, one got the impression that Williams actually has a plan. He revealed that the company is in talks with large consumer packaged good companies, and whether that's to sell the company internal services or to help the company monetize its own Twitter feeds, it's promising.
Williams said, "We're looking at Q1 for revenues." This is a change from the original, pre-economic meltdown plan. "The original plan was to focus on revenues in 2010. That's no longer the case, since I don't want to raise money in 2009."
The revenue plans aren't just ads or sponsorships. "We want revenues to be product-based. Google built something that can really scale, and that's our intention as well."
Google's a big model for a small company (Twitter has 25 people), and Williams' laid-back affect belies his ambition. He says, "I worked on Blogger for six years, and I don't think that's as big as Twitter. Twitter will dwarf that."
Williams co-founded Blogger, which Google bought in 2003. So it was interesting when Kevin Maney, who was interviewing Williams, asked him if he was worried about "Microsoft or Yahoo" launching a direct competitor to Twitter. Williams said, "I'm pretty sure they are (planning to), but we can't worry about that. Focus is a really big deal. Even Google stumbles on the focus issue. It's not as important as search and advertising. Innovator's dilemma works against bigger companies."
In other words, Twitter will get big by staying small--or at least by not expanding into new areas.
And speaking of expansion, there are several projects on the books. Williams said that the top feature requested on Twitter is grouping, and that it's in the works. This will enable users to segment their Twitter friends into sub-networks to send specific groups certain posts. It will also make Twitter a more useful tool in business.
Williams also said that the company is working on ways to make Twitter easier for newbies to get into. "It's amazing anyone uses Twitter today," he said. "It's hard."
I left the talk with more confidence in Williams than I had previously, although I'm still not convinced that Twitter can be as big as Williams says it will become. Not because the concept isn't big--it is--but rather because I am not convinced that a natural monopoly will form in the space. Social services are tending toward interoperability. Also, it's never a sure bet that the first company in a technology space will be the one that ends up dominating in it. Google wasn't the first search engine, for example. MySpace wasn't the first social network. The microblogging corner of the technology economy is extremely young, just as Twitter is.
Previously: 11 Twitter business models: Vote for the best.
Rafe Needleman writes about start-ups, new technologies, and Web 2.0 products, as editor of CNET's Webware. E-mail Rafe. 
I do wonder whether some of the changes are as likely to disrupt current growth as they are to create new opportunity. If ads start appearing in one form or another, or members do start getting charged for premium features, could them prompt people to look for an alternative just at the start of the curve, like Twitter was 18 months ago?
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
But, rather than "lost", perhaps Williams is not answering
for good reason? Many care about the health of Twitter.
And therefore, will forgo a detailed revenue model projection.
Why expose his throat to hyenas when they don't even hide
the fact they're out there?
You're mistaking politely evasive for unsure.
Or upset you didn't scoop.
Aside from evolving to a platform with better API access, Twitter will be way ahead of the game in understanding the interactions of the community; how connections are formed and maintained, and what the content of that communication is. Data.
What Google is to the web, Twitter will be to the microblogisphere.
biggest news out of this to me is the "Groups" thing... they're actually behind on this one, since certain team-collaboration apps for business use have already implemented this Twitter-like functionality...one example (a client): http://bit.ly/40BT
cheers,
Graeme
www.tech-surf-blog.com
For those who get a tingle up the leg with this social networking crap, the very first time you get asked WHY you havent updated yourself or WHERE are you, etc, you will realize how INTRUSIVE you just allowed your life to become.
Get real folks. There are so few GREAT ideas, this is not one of them. This is simply another failure.
- by MarkEssel April 9, 2009 5:28 AM PDT
- Great read Mr. Needleman, concise and informative just what I like to see. Looking forward to which microblogging service brings the greatest utility (I'm betting on intelligent advertising with my blog).
- Reply to this comment
-
(10 Comments)