Twitter’s Goal: Critical Mass not Monetization January 2, 2008
Posted by John Furrier in Technology.trackback
News Flash: Twitter doesn’t care about monetization. In my opinion that is a good thing. The entire business strategy for Twitter and Ev is product focus and adoption based. Their only goal is critical mass. If they build a good product they will get there. And as they say in golf “it’s looking good off the tee..”
There are many who are speculating on Twitter. Duncan Riley says that Twitter will break into the mainstream. Meanwhile Allen Stern says they are fu$ked for not focusing on a revenue model. I have been using twitter lately and find it a good resource for global topic based conversations. It is taking me away from Facebook. Facebook has been really letting me down lately. What’s interesting is that they have some good developers writing some very relevant apps.
Jeremiah Owyang always has the latest on the twitter apps.
My favorites are:
Twitter stats - gets all the activity stats by username.
Tweetscan - keyword search on all the twitter posts. Tweetscan is great for monitoring what is being said about you or your products.
Tweeterboard- playing off the vanity of users this app is great to see where you are. I like it because it will create more incentive to tweet, but I don’t think the algorithm is correct. It doesn’t seem to reward good tweets just volume - it needs to reward valuable twittering. I am on twitter username: Furrier. I love the direction twitter is going and it is the new Digg. I think that Digg has lost it’s community value. I no longer use Digg.
Check out Dave Winer’s take. http://www.scripting.com/stories/2008/01/02/twittersBusinessModel.html
Totally right. It has nothing to do with revenue model but I would argue that they have a business model - acheive adoption on the product side.
Can you say Flip?
Jason Callacanis has the same view as you John. It really is a mindset of the entrepreneur. Building a revenue model early restricts growth and takes away from product innovation (although not completely). Focusing on scale is another mindset - it’s about investing for growth. Being venture funded allows a company like twitter viable. they get to scale and either raise more money (very likely) and deploy a revenue model that meets the market expectations.
btw: love your posts. Keep on posting.
Too early to say conclusive things. The world is full of uncertainties. There are a lot of surprises. Twitter might shock us one day.
Thanks for the mention John, amazing how such a tiny tool has grown so fast.
[...] who clearly still doesn’t get it. Even though his heavily-funded Podtech.crap flamed out, he argues Twitter is smart for pursuing a strategy sans business model. The idiot Calacanis thinks that even [...]
Great article, yet I am going to admit I don’t understand what Twitter is or does? I understand technorati, pinging, and StumbleUpon, my favorite btw. But I don’t know how to optmize it for my blog which is mainly fiction, poetry, reviews and my whims as well as very, very new. I could use a brief 6th grader breakdown. I know it’s asking a lot. Anyway, thank you, Veronica
Veronica: Twitter is a communication tool for individuals. It’s like a global chat room. You get feedback and take conversations public or take them private. I’ve met several interesting and educated tech people on Twitter.
Thanks Anon. Bill and Jim: I would do the same if I were at Twitter get mass traction and then implement the revenue model. If twitter focused to much on monetization it misses the adoption curve. It’s a tough decision even though generally I favor monetization over momentum. For Twitter critical mass is the main goal. Remember Google had no revenue model before it achieved critical mass in search. Same principle here.
To my new friend at Tech Merkin: I salute you - now i’ll have to turn in my computer science degree and masters degree in business
John,
What is your new startup going to be? Now that you’re not at PodTech I’m wondering what you’re up to? Evan Williams moved off of Odeo and now that you’ve moved on from PodTech I’m really interested in what your next move is?
[...] found it through John Furrier’s blog, he recommends another couple of Twitter [...]