Would You Pay for Twitter?
Twitter is an amazing website, I have over 1,100 amazing people that I keep in touch with. I’ve quickly learned it has some serious advantages in my networking and social connection that other sites can’t possibly stand up against. But one has to wonder, how will the company make money? In the beginning, most people thought you’d have to pay for it, but website like Read Write Web starting writing their own Twitter Business Model Thoughts. In fact, even Jason Calacanis wrote an article about 3 ways Twitter can make money, basically he said it comes down to 3 things, which are:
1. In feed advertising
2. SMS Advertising
3. Subscriptions
But these would all bring horrible results, and would create the Myspace Effect, referenced here by Brian Alvey:
Overbloating the user-experience, in both Brian’s Twitter Business thoughts thoughts and Jason’s is incorrect. Evan Williams, founder of Twitter, has the right idea – make companies pay for the metrics/traffic data. This can be much, much more profitable in the long run, and it doesn’t interrupt with the visual or usability of the website.
So the other day I asked my followers if THEY would pay for Twitter.
Here’s what my Twitter Followers had to say if they’d pay for Twitter:
pcnerd37: I would not pay for twitter since there are so many other free services out there that I use and could easily move to.
SSADMA: I think a Wikipedia approach could work well (i.e. donations) or perhaps we could pay to follow certain luminaries?
RockinPRGirl: Why pay for something that has been free all this time? If Twitter were to go paid, someone will come up with something else.
reyes: I think power users would and others who don’t want to see the service go away, but it would not bring in new people.
reyes: forgot to add that I personally soul pay for the service but only since I have been using it. I wouldn’t as a newbie
douglasderda: oh hell no. not as long as i have Plurk.com 
jenando: I wouldn’t pay for it, but I am probably also not maximizing Twitter to its fullest potential either.
rorowe: Yes, but I wouldn’t pay anymore than $25 a year, and I’d have pretty high demands for quality service for that price.
mpete510: No. I don’t think people would pay for it. Twitter would need to add a ton more functionality like Pownce to be worth the $.
BradLeclerc: I would pay a bit for twitter if it had more consistant uptime and wasn’t so prone to extreme lag at times…
disposablepal: possibly. There would have to be some additional features or a very good price.
ElliotGarciaJr: Depends on the pricing model and features offered for paying. I am still on the fence but I would pay based on current results.
ftomee: good question. I would. a max of around 3$ a month though. Maybe more if the SMS forwarding came back for european countries
ftomee: I have to read the new FAQ & twitter help, I admit :-/
ropiko: if it’s not too expensive 
scheffxp: Never would I pay to twitter… in this day and age.. everything needs to be FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE ~ SCHEFF
paradisoparadis: Hmmmm…. maybe. Depends on how often I would use it.
JonWho: No, I don’t think it’s such a major part of my life that were it to need payment, I would give it.
Julianne_Jewels: I wouldn’t pay for twitter, I have myspace and facebook and everyone pretty much on here is on them.
pomie: pay for twitter? Do I get reliability? More features? More control? Support for different accounts (group vs indiv)…yeah
When it comes to simple services, especially ones that are easily recreated or have many existing alternatives, I go by the saying, “If its free its me. If I have to pay, no way!”. I would gladly move over to FriendFeed if all my followers weren’t on twitter. While I find it a little harder to manage, I find FriendFeed to be a better service in almost every way.
i dont want to pay , but the easiest way for twitter is to ask a license fee from all those third party guys who are using twitter’s api
This is what the internet has opened up for everyone isn’t it? Free information and stuff like that.
How many people expect free music these days? (I should know I make music) and us musicians have to be creative in ways to make a living doing what we do without ostracising huge numbers of people by not giving it away. Don’t get me wrong I’m happy to do whatever it takes to get people to hear my music and I do give it away for free, but I would be really annoyed if sites like Twitter expected payment.
I agree with the comment above. Charge a licence fee for developers who access the API, but then, how do they make money? Should they then charge users? I think Facebook is considering doing something like this for app developers.
Maybe the freedom of the internet will deem money obsolete in the future… Who knows?
[...] … Would you pay for Twitter?’, a very good question, asked by Walt Ribeiro, at his blog. It made me think, and I came to the conclusion that I’d pay (though it all depends on the [...]
[...] you pay for Twitter?’, a very good question, asked by Walt Ribeiro, at his blog. It made me think, and I came to the conclusion that I’d pay (though it all depends on the [...]
thats great that you are talking about the twitter api,a good example of searching with the twitter api is on twiogle.com because you can search on twitter and google at the same time.
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