Michelle A. Heath » Business models

When will that tweet cost you?

Michelle Heath — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 03:01:29 +0000

I suppose it’s inevitable. There’s that old thing about, hm, what’s that? Oh, right Making Money. The bacon, the benjamins, the bill-payer, the thing that keeps companies alive and growing. It’s one of the trickiest nuts for all of these social media companies to crack (R.I.P. matchmine). I always wondered how Twitter would foray into the world of trying to pay their own way. Would they go the advertising route? Hard to do with all that user generated content. Would they offer an ad opt-out? They could charge a fee to users who choose to opt-out of ads. But how many people pay not to see ads? Right. Okay, so they could do a subscription model for users. Charge some sort of flat monthly fee based on usage (# of tweets, # of followers, direct messages). I suppose that could work but I have a feeling some other social media community site like Yammer would show up with no fees and eat their lunch.

So, maybe the best option is to go after the deep pockets. There are a whole bunch of companies like Zappos, Amazon and GoDaddy who have figured out the benefits of using Twitter to get real-time, real-honest feedback about their products and services. These companies are getting their social media on and creating loyalty, providing great service and connecting with their users – all free of charge. Brilliant! Why bother supporting an internal chat function or a room full of service reps when you can go directly to your users by creating a Twitter account?

Wonder how long it will be before Twitter starts to charge someone for something. The economy has made VCs more cautious about dishing out dollars and I’d be curious to know a) how much runway Twitter has with their existing funding and b) how much additional money they could raise without revenue either in-sight or in-pocket. So, Twitter, what’s it going to be?

And as for you, dear reader, any projections?

Microblogging is the new black

Michelle Heath — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 16:15:04 +0000

It’s hard to keep up. First brown was the new black, then eggplant, then came Facebook and now microblogging. You’re in right? Do you know what the hell microblogging is? Okay, let’s start by answering a few simple questions: Are you on Twitter? Yammer? Pownce (no, not the cat food)? Do you religiously update your status on Facebook? Do you know how to fit your most clever thoughts into 140 characters or less? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions then you are a microblogger. Cool! If you answered, no, where have you been hiding? Go get yourself a Twitter account and check it out. I will tell you that when I first started tweeting last fall, I was completely intimidated. I thought, who the heck cares what I’m having for lunch? The amazing thing is that people do. Well, maybe care is a strong word, but people love to learn about other people. Whether you’re in the mix tweeting up a storm, or watching from the sidelines, microblogging, as it’s called, is where it’s at.

Today, I read the Business Week post on my friends over at Blip.fm. I worked with Jeff and his team while I was at matchmine (RIP). The guys at Blip are really on to something. They started with Fuzz.com – a site that connects artists with fans and has a whole bunch of cool indie music. As the Twitter started to gain momentum, they decided to integrate music with tweeting and, viola, Blip.fm was born. You can think of it almost as a twitter for music, which is brilliant because I can share music with my friends on Twitter and meet other people (they call them DJs) who share my taste in music.

The microblogging space will continue to get more interesting as companies begin adding unique features (like music, photos, video) to the standard short message. They say full-featured microblogging will be the next big thing. What do you think?