Revealed: How Twitter plans to make $140m by 2010

by Gareth Jones, revolutionmagazine.com 17-Jul-09, 09:16

LONDON - Twitter is planning to roll out a five-pronged commercial strategy aimed at helping it generate $140 million in revenue by 2010 and $1.5 billion in sales by 2013.

According to stolen documents published by TechCrunch, Twitter's long-awaited money-making strategy focuses on verified accounts, search ads, sponsored tweets, AdSense widgets and payments.

Verified accounts, described by Twitter as ‘the fastest way to make money without putting the whole organisation behind it', would see corporate and celebrity users charged for their Twitter accounts. Facebook currently operates a similar model, requiring advertisers to pay to create Fan Pages, as opposed to setting up a profile.

Search ads would see heavy users of Twitter's search API required to run ads on the service. According to the leaked documents, Twitter will invest in engineering to make the offering ‘flawless' and ‘timely'.

The thirds prong of the strategy focuses on generating revenue via sponsored tweets that could see advertisers charged for targeting consumers with direct messages offering coupons and discount vouchers.

Twitter's commercial strategy also includes AdSense widgets. The microblog's founders have said little of this in the past, but they could take the form of Twitter ads that run on third-party sites and in other apps like Google's AdSense.

There is little information in the stolen documents about payments, the final prong of Twitter's ambitious money-making plan.

Twitter has seen the internet flooded with 310 of its most confidential documents including partner agreements, financial projections and security passcodes after it fell foul of hackers. Click here for six of the juiciest snippets from the company's secret files.

Comments

Joe Hughes - 17/07/2009

So the twitter grand plan is: Getting celebs to pay for a platform with no proven ROI. Display adverts at a time when newspapers and broadcasters are all complaining about how little online advertising is actually bringing in and worst of all spam, or sponsored tweets as they have called them. simply because of Twitters traffic they will certainly generate some revenue but will it be enough? For me the biggest question isn't whether twitter will make a profit or not, it is why when Twitter and other platforms that are completely different from the traditional media platforms that have come before them are they still trying to shoe horn old advertising and sponsorship models which simply don't fit or work?

Gav S - 17/07/2009

"Display adverts at a time when newspapers and broadcasters are all complaining about how little online advertising is actually bringing in" Lets face it, how much of that statement is due to advertisers and agencies still not 'getting' online and thus being unable to justify spending more? I'd say a good 60%+ of the people in online display haven't got a clue...

Guy Gilpin - 17/07/2009

My guess is the minute they make any charge to users, there will already be a number of similar start up communities in place, eager to offer the same type of service in the quest to get high volumes of users. The Twitter users will simply send one last tweet and jump ship bringing most followers with them. It will be a while before it settles into a profitable format.

krishnamurthi ramachandran - 17/07/2009

This is a very good beginning to twitter. They are the first to introduce 140 words at a time. Really ,very intelligent social website. Through my 140 words typing,i have 200 followers with in 2 months. Hereafter,all registered,known companies have to allot separate amounts towards advertisement in world leading social websites. This is a good article. Thanks.