Twitter’s Master Plan To Keep Tweets at Home and Put Money in the Bank
By
I’m on a Alpha-Beta testing roll lately. First, I was given a sneak peak at Twitter Lists — which I really like a lot.
Then Google invited me to early test Google Wave. Since me and the Wave are in the early dating stage, I’m not ready to make a long term commitment, yet. But so far the Wave shows some potential, however since there are a ton of things I still don’t get about the Wave and bugs that still need to be worked out, I’m not all in with Waving, yet.
And now Twitter is back — this time asking me to check out another new feature, “Retweet.” Actually, most Twitter users have been “RT-ing” for a long time, but retweeting as the screen shot from Twitter.com points out is still not “officially” a Twitter sanctioned function and until now you couldn’t automatically or directly retweet from Twitter
Retweets are the life blood of Twitter. Passing along an interesting Tweet from someone you are following is what makes Twitter a social network and not just a texting service.
So why is Twitter incorporating a RT function into its main web page now? Two reasons. Traffic and money.
First, Twitter wants Twitterers to spend more time on Twitter.com and less time on the many third party Twitter apps.
Second, and you don’t need 140 characters to figure this one out: Advertising $$$$$$.
You can bet in the not distant future Twitter will be rolling out a number of ad/marketing products to exploit its growing web traffic. Up until now Twitter apps like TweetDeck, Twitterrific and many others have been the tools favored by many Twitterers. So it’s not uncommon for some to never have a reason to go to Twitter.com . However that may not be the case down the road as Twitter continues to add functionality directly on its site.
I can see at least two revenue streams Twitter can pursue with its two newest rollouts. People on Twitter are making all kinds of cool lists for others to follow. People, organizations and businesses on these lists tend to share common interests that are certain to be of interest to marketers. My prediction is that we will soon see branded and sponsored Twitter lists with revenue shared between the lists creator and Twitter.
The second revenue stream will come from retweets. I predict it won’t be long before Twitterers with massive followings begin to get paid for what they are tweeting or specifically what they are linking to in their tweets. I’ve often scratched my head wondering why companies haven’t taken greater advantage to monetize web links. Without links, the World Wide Web is just the Internet. Retweets seem to be a sure way to link people with information and Twitter with profits.
