Twitter Tipping Point, The Real Monetisation Strategy
March 12th, 2009Twitter has in my mind reached a tipping point.
Reason being? at a family function last night someone asked me about twitter, something happened this week and suddenly everyone knows about it.
I will check in a few months and see if indeed this week has been it. It definitely is in conversations it wasn’t last week.
Radio mentions, Skittles, Tv, all these things have combined.
People all over the world are asking the ‘internet guy’ in their frame of reference, what is this twitter?
If you are a brand who has exposed yourself to this internet guy you are ahead. For me I highlighted Twitter with Vodafone & Telecom, brands they know. If you haven’t made the leap you are already behind.
Now twitter has reached this, what is the next step? Monetisation.
Tip of everyones tongues.
And from my readings, observations and looking forward several steps, contextual advertising is the way to go.
Twitter bridges the gap between, locality, motivation, mood that Google doesn’t.
Live, response driven ads, are going to not only help the twitter experience, they will drive a lot of value to users.
Imagine an event being cancelled, a competitor can immediately place an ad saying hey we are still on, for all those that search for the event. This is timely, relevant and reaches a motivated audience.
That is just one application, same can be for brand monitoring ie search for coca cola, coca cola has a special deal or competition running.
I would certainly pay for an advertisement to pop up everytime someone searched bwagy or ben young.
That’s friday thoughts, have a think, how would you leverage advertising on real time search?
(Note: by definition Google is post-search, it searches events that have already happened, certainly within the frame of reference of someone who wants information from within 15 mins ago).
Tags: growth, skittles, tipping point, twitter, value of twitter
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 10:10 pm. 
March 13th, 2009 at 12:54 am
Hi Ben. I agree that Twitter is at or near a tipping point. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve noticed more and more references in the “mainstream” media.
Personally, I think some of the monetisation strategies that have been floated are red herrings. I can’t believe there isn’t a game plan there already. I reckon there are lots more creative approaches than online ads, which users can easily tune out.
Twitter is one of the few web services I would be prepared to subscribe to in order to keep my stream ad free in fact.
March 13th, 2009 at 1:03 am
Have you ever heard someone complain about Google Ads? I really do believe that contextual ads on searches offer a huge opportunity that is a win/win for both parties. If you used twitter you would never see any ads unless you searched.
March 15th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
[…] week I engaged in a blog discussion regarding how Twitter will monetise its service offering. It got me thinking about social media in […]