10 ways that Twitter could make money quickly

Another great post from Melissa Chang:

Twitter, the popular micro-blogging service that asks users to update what they are doing 140 characters at a time, has received its share of press in the past year. From rounds of funding to being plagued by downtime, the service has had both ups and downs. One of the most constant criticisms of Twitter is its apparent lack of a business model.

Coming from a media background, my philosophy has always been “If you have an audience, you can figure out a way to make money.” And Twitter has an audience. According to Hitwise, Twitter usage is continuing to see phenomenal growth and current estimates peg the number of users at more than 2 million.

With that kind of audience, Twitter is poised to make a boatload of money. How just depends on the business model that Twitter decides to follow. Here are 10 ways that Twitter could make money quickly.

1) Banner Advertising — This may not be a creative audience-based money maker, but it works. Advertising is based on audience size, and with a large audience, Twitter should be able to crank out some money using traditional banner advertising. Twitter is already trying this experiment in Japan, and if it is successful, there is no reason that the company won’t roll banner advertising out to Twitter users everywhere.

2) Paid Posts — Banners won’t reach the hundreds of thousands of users who don’t actually use the Twitter.com site, but who only interact with Twitter through third-party applications or SMS messaging. By allowing advertisers to pay to send a Twitter post that is distributed to all (or a percentage of) Twitter users, advertisers will be able to reach the audience in a relevant format. Posts would have to be tagged as sponsored, of course, and there would have to be limits on the number and frequency that they are sent to users, but this would be a fast way to reach the vast audience.

3) Sponsorships — If Twitter decides that it doesn’t want to manage a large number of advertiser relationships (which can be a big pain), it could opt for a sponsorship model that would allow one advertiser to sponsor the entire site for a period of time. That sponsor would dominate the inventory — the banner slots, the paid messages, etc. — and this type of sponsorship would not come cheap. But many companies will leap at the chance to be affiliated with such a popular and cutting-edge service. And the first few companies to do so will likely get a ton of publicity, as well.

4) Charge for ad-free usage — No doubt many people will protest if Twitter adds advertising, since the service has been ad-free for so long. For those people, Twitter could introduce a no-ad option that would require users who didn’t want to see any ads to pay to use the service. This is something that Twitter co-founder Evan Williams did when he started Blogger, and it could definitely work again here.

5) Tiered subscription model — Many Twitter users have been clamoring for a paid version of the product for months, offering to pay to use Twitter if it just would stay up. Twitter will always need to maintain a free service level in order to appeal to the masses and to continue to grow its audience, but there is clearly an opportunity to charge users for enhanced capabilities. For example, there may be subscriptions that promise constant uptime, offer the ability to include photos, or provide the option for other types of posts. Or, what if Twitter simply charges users $1 each week that it doesn’t go down? That would give users what they want, and would give Twitter a financial incentive to increase uptime, as well.

6) Offer a monitoring package for businesses — There has been no lack of publicity for the companies that are using Twitter effectively. Zappos and Comcast come to mind. But most companies haven’t even heard of Twitter, let alone started using it. Building a business-to-business interface that would allow companies to monitor their reputation on Twitter — and begin to participate in the conversation — should be relatively straightforward. And if Twitter charged companies to use the service, it could make money quickly. (Perhaps this is better as an idea for a new company based on the Twitter API, which brings us to the next idea . . .)

7) Charge companies that use the Twitter API – Twitter’s API has been used to build some cool applications — Twitterrific and Twhirl come to mind. And the API has at least 10x the amount of traffic of the Website, according to Williams. All the companies that are using the Twitter API can profit from the use of it with no benefit to Twitter. If Twitter continued to allow the free use of the API, with an understanding that they would get a percentage of all earnings based on profits, there would be some immediate revenue. Another suggestion is to charge for API requests with request-rate surcharges.

Affiliate program — Users are recommending products, services, restaurants, stores and countries to visit all day long on Twitter. An affiliate program would allow users to sign up to start making money on some of their recommendations. If a user recommends a product that is part of the program, the user — as well as Twitter — would get a percentage of the sale.

9) List rental — This may be a very Web 1.0 idea, but if Twitter put its opt-in email list on the market, it would earn a pretty penny.

10) Mobile payments — This idea comes courtesy of Silicon Alley Insider, and it’s a good one. The P2P mobile payment market is wide open, and Twitter has the stuff in place to be able to capitalize.

These are just some of the many ways that Twitter could start making money quickly. Until it decides on a business model, however, Twitter will keep growing its audience while getting its cash the old-fashioned way — through VC funding.

Follow Melissa Chang on Twitter @mchang16. She is the founder of Pure Incubation, an Internet incubator based in the Boston area, and has a blog at 16thletter.com.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

With Lively, Google tries its own ‘Second Life’

Google’s Lively is a Web-based project similar to Second Life. This shows a recreation of Google headquarters, complete with the T. Rex skeleton.

Google on Tuesday plans to unveil an online 3D social arena called Lively, the Internet giant’s take on Second Life. But Google wants it to be part of your first life.

Second Life requires users to download and install a separate “client” software package that taps into the online world.

Lively also requires a download and installation–Windows only for now–but then people can use Internet Explorer or Firefox to enter the virtual world.

“It’s integrated with the Internet. It’s not an alternate destination,” said Niniane Wang, Google’s engineering manager for the project. “Our intention is to add to your existing life.”Integration with the ordinary Internet takes several forms.

For one thing, you can pipe in content hosted elsewhere on the Internet, including photos or videos. For another, you can embed your Lively area into your blog or, using widgets Google has written, on MySpace and Facebook Web pages.

And you can e-mail your friends a normal Web address to get them to join.

On my list to try over the week end - more to come…

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Wave your arms in the air and charge your phone like you just don’t care

London. 24 June 2008. Orange today announced the launch of a mobile phone charger prototype that is powered by dance energy. The Orange Dance Charge is the result of months of research into alternate, sustainable energy sources to power mobile phones during summer music festivals.

Working with renewable energy specialists, GotWind, who were also responsible for last year’s Orange Wind Charge and this year’s Orange ReCharge Pod, Orange commissioned the research into a kinetic energy portable phone charger that would harness the energy created by festival revellers dancing to their favourite bands to ensure a clean and renewable energy source.

Whilst the research of the Orange and GotWind team is still in its infancy and continues to be developed. Orange has built fully functioning prototype models of the Dance Charge that will be tested at this year’s Glastonbury Festival, taking place at Worthy Farm in Pilton, Somerset from 27-29 June.

The Dance Charge prototype weighs in at only 180grams and measures 4¼” x 2½”, approximately the same size as a pack of cards and the same weight as a mobile phone. The Dance Charge unit comes encased in an elasticated, black, neoprene strap with Velcro attachments which is attached over the wearer’s bicep in a similar fashion to a runner’s arm-mounted mp3 player.

As the user moves their arms along to the music – a specially designed system of weights and magnets, similar to that found in kinetic energy watches, creates an electrical current which provides a top-up of charge to a storage battery. So whilst festival goers are out dancing to their favourite bands, the charger stores dance generated power in the reservoir battery, ready for when they return to their tent each night to recharge their phone.

Orange also has plans to showcase The Dance Charge with an interactive Dance Charging Man who will help recharge mobile phones during the festival through the power of dance! The Dance Charging Man will only require one form of payment…a dance with the person who needs their phone re-charged!

Hattie Magee, Head of Partnerships at Orange UK, said “As Official Communications Partner of Glastonbury Festival, it is important that we help keep festival goers connected with their mates at both the festival and at home. We wanted to create a fun, engaging and interactive product which would encourage users to have a laugh while charging their mobile phone and at the same time test out a new energy efficient charging prototype.”

Blogged with the Flock Browser

The Digital Home of 2013: Welcome to the cloud

Stop what you’re doing and take a quick look around your desk. Chances are, you’re looking at a media server, an external hard drive, a couple of flash drives, and maybe even an old Zip drive from the 1990s. To make matters worse, your shelves are inundated with boxes of shrink-wrapped software packages.

But things are about to change. As broadband penetration expands, the idea of accessing data storage, software, and even extra processing power is becoming more attractive. And if you play your cards right, your digital home in 2013 will not only be free from clutter, but it might be in a serious relationship with the Web. Hey, everyone needs some lovin’ every now and then!

Although some believe that “online computing” allows users to simply interact with applications on the Internet, the concept is far more advanced than that. Doing all of your work on the Internet allows for greater storage flexibility, access to specialized services, and even greater computing power for people engaged in certain tasks, such as rendering 3D artwork. In the commercial sense, it’s very much a discussion that companies like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft want to have as the desktop slowly gives way to the cloud.

Today, the average person performs a variety of tasks offline that by 2013 may be performed online. And although the idea of using Office online may be daunting to some, programs like Google Docs have shown that it’s not only possible, but offers advantages ranging from convenience to lower costs.
And while you may want to keep that old Zip drive for the memories (hey, it’s a classic!), the rest of the physical storage media — along with the old software boxes and cases lining your shelves — will likely be banished from the digital home of 2013.

Great article from:
The Digital Home of 2013: Welcome to the cloud | The Industry Standard

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Symbian goes open source after Nokia buy-out

The leading smartphone operating system, Symbian, is to become open source, under guidance from a newly set up Symbian Foundation.

Nokia is buying up other vendors’ Symbian shares for US$409 million (£204 million), and then - apparently - donating the company to the Foundation.

The Symbian Foundation will start work in 2009, and will unify the major Symbian user interface, Nokia’s S60, with the other flavors, UIQ and Docomo’s MOAP(S) to create a platform that will be available royalty-free, and will be fully open source in two years, using the Eclipse public licence. Membership of the Foundation group will cost $1,500.

The move is intended to accelerate Symbian’s goal to get Symbian on to a wider range of phones, for which it has been accepting a steadily reducing royalty. In the first quarter of this year, while keeping a market share above 60 percent, Symbian’s shipments went down. The company faces strong competition from the Windows Mobile platform and now Apple’s iPhone, and growing threats from open source platforms.

“This is clearly a response to Google’s Android and Limo as well as from the iPhone,” said Dean Bubley of Disruptive Analysis. Although the free Symbian project will not start till 2009, it should beat the Google-backed Android phone, and provide a royalty-free phone that will build on a large existing installed base. Symbian has been publicly sceptical about Android

The role of the Symbian company in the new Foundation is not clear, but it is understood that, having bought up the remaining 52 percent of Symbian that it does not own, Nokia will donate it to the Symbian Foundation. Nokia has made an offer of $410 million for the 48 percent of Symbian that is owned by Ericsson, Sony Ericsson, Matsushita, Panasonic and Siemens.

Nokia is doing this because, along with other Symbian handset makers, the company has seen that in its current status Symbian will lose against the other competitors, said Bubley. The move could also give it an entry into the U.S. market where Symbian has struggled, he said. One prominent backer on the Foundation web site is AT&T.

Four years ago, Nokia made a bid to own Symbian after Motorola pulled out of the company, but the move was unpopular, and was prevented by Ericsson. This time round, the company is not making the same mistake and is handing the operating system over to become free and open source.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Montreal’s public bike system integrates Web, RFID

With gas prices climbing daily, many commuters are looking for a more economic (and ecologically responsible) way to travel. Treehugger reports that the City of Montreal has launched one possible solution: the Public Bike System.

The Public Bike System is comprised of modular units that can be moved and added to as needed depending on volume. Users visit a web site to locate a rental unit close to their location and get a real-time update detailing how many bikes are at that location. With an access card or credit card, they can then choose a bike and rent it for any length of time, simply returning it to another station when they reach their destination.

The software behind the Public Bike System tracks every bike in the system, gauging how many bikes are at each location and the functional status of each bike, as well as the status of solar panels running the system and the electronics. Users can alert the system from the rental units if a bike is damaged, and the stats are monitored for traffic and usage patterns, allowing for stations, docks, and bikes to be redeployed as needed.

The bikes themselves have a sturdy, weather-resistant design that includes an aluminum frame, with all cables and derailleur covered. Lighting on the front and back of the bike is always on for additional safety, and the bikes dock with RFID connection. Because the stations and docks run on solar power, they can be placed anywhere in the city and relocated as needed without worrying about connection.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

UK online ad spending will pass TV this year

Score one for new media. The Internet will receive the largest share of advertising dollars in Britain this year, beating television for the first time. The prediction, by Enders Analysis in the UK, cites paid search and online video as the primary drivers of ad spending.

Digital will receive a 19 percent share of ad spending at £3.56 billion compared to a predicted £3.39 billion for television. This equates to a more than 26 percent rise in online spending year-over-year.

Unsurprisingly, Google will grab most of the money spent on search advertising — upwards of 80 percent in Britain, which Reuters called the “most developed online advertising market” worldwide.

Britain is different from the United States in that some of the most popular broadcast channels — the various channels of the British Broadcasting Corporation or the BBC — are publicly funded via taxes. As a result, the BBC channels don’t have traditional advertising and this lowers the total ad spend on television in the country, making it potentially easier for digital spending to surpass TV.

In addition, the BBC recently launched its online video solution iPlayer to great fanfare. IPlayer allows British Internet users to view a wide variety of BBC shows on-demand directly from their computer. This widespread and well-publicized online video initiative could help drive acceptance and overall consumption of online video in the country — and help drive advertising dollars online.

The Reuters report quoted an analyst as saying “there are early signs of a direct shift in spend from TV to the Internet over and above the broader shift to online.”

From: UK online ad spending will pass TV this year | The Industry Standard

Blogged with the Flock Browser

10 cool Facebook applications that you’ve probably never heard of — but should

We’ve all heard of, played with or used the most popular Facebook applications — Scrabulous, Owned! and (Lil) Green Patch come to mind.

But what about the not-as-popular Facebook applications? With more than 27,000 apps to choose from, and the number growing daily, there are plenty of diamonds in the rough that may be unknown, but still stand out because they are particularly interesting, unique, viral or just darn fun.

Here are 10 Facebook applications that you probably have never heard of — but should.

1) Traveler IQ Challenge — This game tests players to find out the answer the question “How well do you know your world?” As a clock counts down, the game presents players with world cities, famous places and world capitals, at various skill levels. Players can only advance to the next level after reaching a high enough score. When players are done with the round, they get a ranking — an overall ranking, and a ranking among their friends — and they are given the opportunity to “challenge their friends” to compete. As well as being educational, this game is addictive. The interface is clean and easy-to-use, and the sense of urgency that the ticking clock provides is excellent.

2) iDescribe — This application is based on the premise that people like to know what their friends think of them. The application makes it easy for friends to pick 5 words that best describe each other. The genius of this app lies in its inherent viral nature — after signing up for iDescribe, there is no way to use it unless your friends are using it, too. In fact, when users sign up for the service and don’t immediately invite their friends, they are reminded: “You haven’t invited any of your friends to iDescribe! So you may not be described back by as many people as you would if you invite some friends!”

3) Web Presence — This application is really simple and useful. It allows users to feature their “social profile” by linking to their profile pages on various other social networking sites. This comes in handy for both business and personal use, as users can add a Web site or blog URL, or link to their profiles on LinkedIn, MySpace, Flickr, Twitter or any other site. There are some features that seem missing here — it would be helpful if the app prompted users on the services that they could enter, it would be nice to be able to reorder the list, and the RSS integration that’s coming in the future will be great — but this is still a simple, easy-to-use and helpful application that could quickly benefit every Facebook user.

4) Sketch Me — This is another fun and very easy to use app. As soon as the application is installed, it immediately takes the user’s profile picture and creates a pencil sketch of the image. Once the user’s friends see their pencil sketched picture, they’ll want one of their own.

5) TWENTY20 Cricket — First a huge disclaimer — I don’t play cricket or know how to play cricket. But even so, this is a really cool game. The best thing about TWENTY20 Cricket is that when a user signs up, they build a team made up of themselves and 14 friends. Without the friends, there’s no game. And the application encourages continued use; the more that users “train” on playing, the more points they earn (and the more likely they are to win in head-to-head challenges).

6) Launch A Package — This is the only corporate app that made the list, and it’s from FedEx. The tool lets you create a package to send to a friend, placing “gifts,” photos or other attachments in a well-branded FedEx box. The most fun comes at the end of the process when the sender gets to slingshot the package to their friend — who then has to download the application to open the package on their end.

7) Countdown — The concept here is simple — this application lets you set a date, and countdown to an event with a ticker that runs on a user’s profile. Since everyone is looking forward to something, this app has endless utility.

Who Has The Biggest Brain? — Part game, part IQ test, this application is hugely addictive. Besides having a great name, the application tests users in four different categories — analysis, calculation, memory and visual processing. At the end of the test, users are given a ranking. They are then compared to their friends who took the test, as well as the rest of the world and their hometown. This application continues to spread as people compete against their friends (and their own personal-best scores) to get a better ranking.

9) Where I’ve Been — This is another travel-related application, but instead of being a game, it allows users to plot on a world map the places they’ve visited, lived and want to go. After filling out their personal profile, users can share/compare maps with their friends. The more places a person’s been, the more addictive this application becomes — and the more that the creators of the app will reach their target audience. (Smart!)

10) Pixton Comics — This may be the best “Facebook application” that isn’t really a Facebook application. Although you can reach the service through Facebook, users actually have to access the app on the Pixton Comics’ site. Once through the registration hoopla, users can create comics without having to draw — either by choosing from templates that are available on the site, or by building their own comic from scratch. Once built, the comic can be embedded in any site — including Facebook.

FROM:

Melissa Chang is the founder of Pure Incubation, an Internet incubator based in the Boston area. She also has a blog about startups at 16th Letter.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Apple rolls out mobile videoconferencing on iPhone?

AppleInsider has an interesting writeup of Kevin Rose’s newest iPhone predictions:

“During a 90 second segment of his weekly Podcast show “Diggnation” this past Friday, Rose told viewers that Apple may be restricting third parties from authoring applications that run in both the foreground and background partly because it doesn’t want a competitor to its own mobile iChat application that will do just that.

More specifically, he claims that a 3G version of the iPhone hardware due in a few months will employ two digital cameras situated back-to-back — one on the front side of the unit behind the transparent touch-screen, and a second one on the back of the handset as it exists today.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

What if Microsoft bought Facebook?

Microsoft has decided it doesn’t want Yahoo anymore. It apparently just wants to make a deal for the profitable part — search advertising. After all, they’re desperate enough to increase their market share that they are going to pay people to use their Live Search. Of course that would still leave Google as the market leader.

At the same time, an interesting rumor has surfaced: Microsoft would buy Yahoo Search, then spend a further $20 billion to buy Facebook. Despite what Mark Zuckerberg says about Facebook remaining independent, it would be difficult to forego that rich an exit.

Facebook is one of several social networks, second only to MySpace and growing rapidly. But while MySpace is still larger, it is the flow of information through Facebook, and the social engagement of its members that makes it important.

The last few conferences I’ve attended have come to me first, and sometimes only, as Facebook invites. My Facebook friends quickly comment on my new photos, or my birthday, and often prefer sending Facebook messages to direct email. In short, there is a thriving social ecosystem within the walls of Facebook that does not exist elsewhere on the web.

Purchasing Facebook would give Microsoft access to over 60 million captive, and very social users, who could potentially be used to drive the growth of Live Search — as well as access to all of their information, and in some cases their entire social lives.

Robert Scoble suggests that this would allow Microsoft to lock Google out of a huge chunk of internet information. That assumes that Facebook stays closed, but companies like Google have done a great deal of work with OpenSocial and data portability, so that is far from a foregone conclusion. As well, Facebook may have a hard time keeping application developers from allowing users to export their own data.

Also, Facebook seems to have no problem disabling accounts. As a user I would be concerned if all of my data just went away one day without explanation, something Facebook users should keep in mind. Do I trust Facebook to protect and keep all of my data for me? No, I’m going to want some way of getting it back out before I depend on it. Until then the data I store there is transient; if it is lost I’ll be able to recover it elsewhere.

Facebook simply can’t stay completely closed forever, even if they continue to hide specific personal information “for their users’ protection“. Especially when other competing networks are becoming more open. They will stiff face competition, and new services will debut. For me, Twitter has supplanted a great deal of communication that might have previously happened via Facebook. And Twitter is very open.

Buying Facebook might give Microsoft a small temporary boost. On the other hand, more than 140 million copies of Windows Vista with an Internet Explorer search box directed right to Microsoft Live Search haven’t helped much. And Microsoft hasn’t really been able to capitalize on user volume of existing services such as Hotmail or MSN instant messaging.

But let’s step back a little. Microsoft hasn’t detailed its plans yet, and a talk of its plans relating to Facebook is mostly rumor and conjecture. Still, if I were Google, I wouldn’t worry too much just yet.

From:

What if Microsoft bought Facebook? | The Industry Standard

Blogged with the Flock Browser