There are a number of threads going on in the blogosphere about Twitter and its business model… Or I should say, the fact that Twitter it has NO business model (still).

Interestingly others are building applications on top of Twitter, i.e. the parasites (such as Twitterrific) who do have business models and charge users.

Interesting…

You know, operational-wise, running Twitter ain’t cheap! There are recurring costs and per-message costs to support the messaging piece alone, not to mention the hosting and broadband itself…

So what should Twitter do?

  • Charge for access to the platform itself (i.e. the APIs)? Yes, once an application built on top of the Twitter platform reaches certain volume and/or a revenue threshold.
  • Use adverts? Yes. Use Social-based adverts? Wait, Facebook tried that and it failed due to privacy concerns.
  • Create vertical Twitter-based applications for specific types of social applications? I believe this should be considered carefully.
  • Charge for up sells for new and exciting features. Maybe. There are a handful of features regarding group management, visibility, etc. that Twitter should have by now.
  • Find a buyer? Definitely.

As I have written before, Mobile Social Software is one of those things people/users love to have and use, but don’t want to pay for it… it’s like Wi-Fi!

Related to this see:

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