Executive summary: I think people should pay a subscription fee based upon how many people they follow.
I’ve been thinking about an appropriate business model for twitter for a while now, it seems like a fun intellectual business problem to wrestle with. Almost all of my ideas had something to do with the amount of followers a person had, something that blended subscription, pro features and or advertising.
I realized last night that it might be better to have a model that charged people based upon the amount of people that they follow. I think a wonderful side effect of this would be to provide an economic incentive to only really follow people who you are interested in, as opposed to playing the twitter game of ‘you follow me and i’ll follow you back’ game.
Here’s the idea, keep twitter free and clear for some number of people that you follow, say 500 or a 1,000, but after the first thousand charge some sort of subscription fee.
The benefits of this are first you don’t penalize people who are very popular, and who actually attract people to use the service. Even better you discourage MLM spammers who seems to be invading this service and gaming the ‘you follow me and i’ll follow you back’ game.
What do you think? I get a huge amount of value out of twitter and am totally ready to pay, what do you think? How much would you pay per 1,000 people you follow on twitter?
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
This is a great model. Personally, I’m a proponent of Twitter selling their technology to, say, universities and big institutions as sort of a private Twitter networks. Think of how awesome that would be! Professors could assign homework or answer questions on the fly. Student organizations could mobilize their constituents at the drop of a hat!
I would hope that enough of these types of subscriptions would subsidize the public network, to keep it free. Sure, a subscription fee based on how many people you are following would really cut down on the spammers, but if current Twitterers would just get smarter about who they follow, that problem would be solved. It’d be like those damned Facebook apps that everyone uses — if you just ignore them or block them, they won’t bother you. And I feel like Facebookers are getting smarter about realizing that.
I applied for the Director of Strategic Partnerships job at Twitter, like probably hundreds of others with big ideas like yours and mine. Wouldn’t that be an awesome job?
I like the idea, however I’m curious how people perceive Twitter and it’s function in their lives. I am new to it and it seems to me that few tweets ever answer the question “what are you doing?” Has Twitter evolved from it’s original mandate? Personally I feel my inclination is to use Twitter to share something I’ve learned or found, more than letting people know what I’m actually doing. I have had to drop a few people I was following, simply because I couldn’t stand seeing entire conversations fill my page. Some organisations are too gung-ho with their publications too. I feel the more selective and careful tweets are, the more attention they’ll attract. This was the motivation for my suggestion that extensive tweet chats be restricted somehow – financially or otherwise, or at least that users should be offered options to tweak tweet deliveries.
Right. Like I tweeted (rather ironically), this model is a blend of pay for use and subscription model.
Perhaps another good way to thwart spammer behaviors is a model like “one cent per following, but get a cent back every time somebody follows you.” Casual users and “those who follows everyone” tends to have a fairly proportional ratio. Power users follow more than being followed. “The Gurus” follow less people than they got followed. This would encourage tweeps to post better content in order to get followed and make very little profit (but social capital nonetheless) along the way.
@Andy – yes I think licensing to organizations is certainly in twitters future, although they will have stiff competition from companies like yonkly and open source solutions like laconi.ca- and yes that does look like an awesome job
@Chris in some ways twitter has not evolved, but the way people use it has. Most of the innovations like hashtags, RT, and $ for stock symbols were ‘user generated innovations’, or community norms that developed through usage.
@Bram – oh that is genius, getting rewarded for people following you back is a great idea, or at least one that helps tune behavior.
@Karl: for what it’s worth as a Twitter amateur and newbie,
“what are you doing?” is becoming a bit redundant then don’t you think? Maybe they should drop the question altogether to encourage diversification of tweets and clear up the confusion. Also how about dropping the @replies out of the general feed altogether, and just showing them in people’s profiles. Many @replies would be better off as Direct Messages because they’re so personal and tedious. Interested in the opinions of more advanced users! Sorry if I’m going off on a bit of a tangent.
I tried to post a reply on this, and it didn’t go through. I am hoping this will. I posted my reply to my own blog, here:
http://mblog.lib.umich.edu/etechlib/archives/2009/01/monetizing_twit.html
@PF Anderson, I had an error too and retyped and resubmitted. One day I’ll learn to copy what I have written in case it doesn’t transmit…
@all, could advertising be integrated somehow? i.e. a ratio of following against followers, resulting in lots of adverts for spammers and perhaps tweet restrictions. Spamming may be a huge problem for twitter, it will need an innovative and sensible solution.
Karl:
I don’t like your idea of charging based on number of people followed, since then we will end up with some people having lots of followers (possibly) but not following them back. And that is just unfriendly. It is the people who have lots of followers/follow people back who are a core to the community/communities on twitter.
Instead, perhaps charge based on number of tweets generated or for some premium service, the way I can upload as many photos as I want to Flickr but need a paid account to do more with those photos such as create more photo sets. Maybe on Twitter they could develop some power advanced search tool that some of us would be willing to pay for, for example. In either case, care would need to be taken to make the price and value such that it is not too expensive, so that people will actually be tempted to sign up for the paid level.
I also like Andy’s idea (above) that they find some other venue for selling the product/services which helps off-set the cost of the community.
Karl, I don’t think a metered pay-for-play model would ever work, regardless of whether it was based on followers, usage, or anything else. I believe many people would pay a reasonable flat rate because once you’re hooked, you can’t imagine living without Twitter! But the moment you “encourage” people to restrict their behavior in order to keep costs down, the entire network become less viral and less valuable.
Additionally, some of the best tweeters are purely for entertainment purposes and many others are advocating for causes or common interests. They bring diversity and color commentary to Twitter. A pricing model that discourages spontaneous, experimental behavior would make Twitter a whole lot less fun.
In fact, without a cheap way for people to indulge their passions, Twitter might just be the province of would-be marketers, early adopters, social media blowhards, hapless realtors, bloggers and MLM schemers. I’ll take @Chico_the_Dog or @Paul_Kinsey over most of those folks any day.
@CarriBugbee
I like the idea. However, I always read about how popular twitter is and how powerful it is for businesses to take advantage of. But I really hasn’t notice any changes it has on my personal or business side from twitter. Maybe I wasn’t using it right.
I have stopped following people after I find that I have read none of their messages. haha
I like your thinking as far as finding a way to discourage spammers. In line with this, what if your follower limit took into account how long you have been with Twitter? Like someone that has been with Twitter a year should be able to follow more people for free than someone that joined an hour ago.
The problem with this method is, of course, that you are attempting to dictate HOW people use Twitter, which is never a good idea. But right now Twitter is free, so that will attract the spammers. I think any ‘paid’ model should also include advanced filtering options that make it easier for ‘power’ users to silo themselves from spammers. Since of course, the power users are usually the biggest evangelists for Twitter.
@CarriBugbee LOL “hapless realtors and social media blowhards”
@all I guess what i’m trying to do is put a mechanism in place that helps discourage spammy usage of twitter. I personally think MLM’rs are going to be the bane of twitters existence just like erection pills were for email. The problem with spammers is that if there is no incremental cost then spam works. I’d also be for pro-accounts that allow you to follow more people. The problem as I see it for twitter right now is the ‘follow me and i’ll follow you game’ devalues the service, especially as people use auto-follow.
These seems like a good idea (for Twitter to monetize their service). It might be that they are waiting to install Twitter in some way onto mobile phones? Or to charge in some way for 3rd party apps. Advertising is a possibility too (but how would you make advertising relevant to the content? Interesting one.
Karl, you’re pay model idea is a great wrinkle to the usage model. However i’m not a fan of pay for normal use. I would rather support a fee for access to power user tools (real-time search / XMPP access) for example. Otherwise, i’m afraid you would start hurting twitter because that would affect negatively the number of new users.
I think from a twitter needs to make money to survive perspective, there are various models that exist out there that wouldn’t affect normal users. Selling twitter user activity data for one thing. Another would be a youtube campaign page-like model, where for a fee brands and/or events get access to a set of tools. For example real-time search results. Enhanced tracking of #hashed twitter messages, and a branded interface.
As far as Spam, if their can be an Akismet plugin for WordPress, there has to be something we can do about it here on twitter. To me a no-brainer would be to include follower and following count on emails announcing a new follower.
Karl,
Great ideas, but I do agree more with Andy W. Twitter could easily sell services to businesses or maybe start charging a fee for access to the API.
In terms of consumer sales, I’d be willing to pay for a “Pro” account that allows for 200 characters, better organization of all my messages, AND advanced search functions.
Just my 1 cent (we’re in a recession)
John
advanced search functions.