Comments on: Biz Stone on Twitter: No ads

At Reuters Technology Summit, Twitter co-founder says the company doesn't plan to incorporate advertising into its business model at all, instead relying on paid tools.

[mjconver]

Why would a corporation want to pay for a crippled IM service that they can get for free?

[averagedude]

because the service they could get for free wouldn't have a network of 20 million people. The power of these tools is not in the technology that drives them, but in the communities that have adopted them. Why do you pay to live where you live? You could just as easily live in a remote part of a 3rd world country for pennies. You live where you live because your life, your community is there. Same thing online...

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...

[R_Parson]

I sure hope can monetize those "business tools and add ons" soon and generate cash quickly. Otherwise Twitter will be a spectacular failure.

[NickH]

Maybe Stone didn't mean an ad-based model was boring, but that they, like many people dont really want ads on the computer screen all day long.

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.

[mikeburek]

But then the government would be in charge of deciding what is "socially worthy" for the investment. The government couldn't care less about Twitter. But the government might be interested in Facebook's ad tracking technology that can track your web visits and purchases across many sites, and doesn't make it easy to opt-out.

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.

[grantkuo]

At a tweetup a month ago, when asked how twitter will make money, Jack Dorsey gave one example of charging/setting up corporate account. That can be really lucrative considering how many consumer oriented companies at first to want presence on twitter. Then roll out to b2b companies etc. At the mean time, I still think ad model on search is another significant revenue source, maybe twitter is just sending out smoke

[scorpio0]

the only reason companies want a presence on twitter is because of the hype. they essentially can't afford not to have a presence because twitter, as a medium, has gained a lot of public exposure which can be converted into 'cool' credentials in corporate/politics land.

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.

[greggrss10]

that is grrrreat news. but, i can say that i wouldn't be surprised if the back out of that idea.

[stigmattaman]

Yeah, they've said search and business enablers would be there keys to monetization. Don't see why they need to take ads off the table entirely though.

[selfkill]

This is how the elaborate scammers at Twitter keep gullible VCs seduced and mesmerized. Its a giant smoke screen to elude their investors into believing they have some concept of a business model when they really don't. I guess its not enough that $57 million has been shoveled into Twitter for no fruitful purpose.

[Naimo5577]

Failwhale!
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.

[kgsbca]

Twitter is doomed. I just don't see people signing up to receive ads from corporations who will pay for the right to have their spam, I mean tweets, broadcast to all those mobile devices. If it's for a private twitter network, they really don't need twitter for that, do they?

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.

[akky_akimoto]

They have been testing ads to Japanese users, which is one of the biggest languages on twitter.