Dave brings up the obvious - distribution
Dave Winer responds to Allen Stern’s post on Twitter’s business model with this simple notion: distribution.
Dave thinks its as obvious as falling off a log - that Twitter can now control and/or least help monetize off of all these add-on tools like Twitterific or the latest stats thingie, while at the same time give away all the infrastructure, APIs and eco-system which has grown up around Twitter.
If only it was that simple - Dave!
You’re right - at this point Twitter can totally BECOME a cell phone, presence/micro blogging service, media sharing valuable platform for some large acquirer - and then simply count their acquisition dollars - as a business model.
But that clearly ONLY benefits Twitter - and Evan Williams (and Fred Wilson’s Union Sq. Ventures.)
I totally agree with Allen Stern - its time Twitter decide upon a business model - because without having a clear path to cash flow, the ONLY path to liquidity for Evan’s VCs (and Evan) is to sell the company. If they have something else up their sleeve, then they need to play it - or else why would we trust them any further?
The time has come for Twitter to let us know how THEY make money or else why would a Twitter add-on developer put his ‘balls’ into Twitter’s vice?
Dave’s assumption that Twitter’s real value is in a distribution play by participating in an ecosystem they empower is fine and correct - if you ONLY look at the issue as Twitter’s business model or path to liquidity. But I don’t wake up in the morning worrying about how to make Evan and Fred richer.
I’d like to think that we could federate Jaiku, Pownce and Twitter together - with say - Seesmic, Meebo and AIM. Or maybe MSN Messenger. There are all sorts of fish in the sea - and I don’t consider Twitter ‘open’ unless there are LOTS of federated presence services - all benefiting the end-users.
As coolio as Twitter is - it all just keeps leading back to making Evan Williams rich - again. But isn’t there an even MORE open scenario for presence/micro-blogging platforms like Twitter?
Doesn’t Loic LeMeur want to mesh Seesmic into the Twitter presence stuff or federate Seesmic users with Twitter user followers? Jason Calacanis may only think of it from the money POV, but he does see the size of Twitter’s potential. Now if Jason could only think about something else than money.
Doesn’t Google now want to use Jaiku as their micro-blogging tool and gateway to GTalk and all that social stuff that’s getting aggregated, subscribed to and updated - in real-time? 10’s of millions of Googler’s maps, RSS readers and GMail are gonna start getting ‘friends’ updates and social graph status reports - so it would be coolio to gateway to Twitter with all that. Certainly Jaiku would like that.
Won’t Yahoo or Microsoft wish to mesh into Twitter’s presence platform as well? Or AOL share micro-blogs on their AIMpages platform? Isn’t this all much bigger that Twitter’s pay day?
And what about the independents - like me and Dave? Do we want to be beholden to whomever Evan sells out to, or would we like to have a shot at being ‘distribution’ plays - as well? Maybe I want to be standing on top of the Jamaican Reggae distribution Twitter? While Doc Searls runs the ‘vendors better listen to us‘ Twitter platform. Can’t we have 100’s of federated Twitters updating and micro-blogging to each other - all connected by an OpenDNS and API? And what about OpenAds? Can’t we ALL share in the shekels?
So as coolio as Twitter is now - I really think it can be cooler.
January 2nd, 2008 at 10:22 am
Marc
I think country channels on Twitter must be next. It was nice to finally meet you in Paris
January 2nd, 2008 at 10:39 am
Marquis, I was just playing the game with Mr. Stern for fun.
But playing along with your query, which is just as valid as his…
I would think that one way for Twitter to grow their ecosystem is to get other people to help them grow it and if they play their cards right they can not only have devs do it but their competitors can too (and of course they don’t *want* to).
I was talking to a friend at Google the other day (yes I have some, believe it or not) and said they’re now where MS was, where general growth in tech means growth for Google. They’ll get their 20 percent no matter what they do. They could just become an investment banker, they hardly have to work to grow.
Twitter may get there too, but they have a long long way to go.
And they sure have challenges, Marc…
Yesterday Scoble presented me with a very straightforward problem which the Twitter API should have been able to solve, but couldn’t. Their ace in the hole, the API, isn’t finished yet. (He wanted to be able to create a new account that would follow all the same people his original account was following.)
Then another one came up, wanting a button in FlickrFan to set the background of my Twitter page. What a great idea! But the Twitter API doesn’t enable it. Arrrgh.
I’d better save this before Firefox crashes. (Again.)
January 2nd, 2008 at 12:59 pm
An open, anonymous brand and product metrics interface that allows commercial product managers to see the raw mentions of a product, and the linguistic parse of whether the language is redress based or judgmental as to quality or the outcomes of interaction with the organization. Charge for the service to these brands. Scub th Identities,
January 4th, 2008 at 6:01 am
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