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Twitter VC Laughs at the Idea that Twitter Has No Business Model
“We think it’s kind of funny,” Dagres recently told Innovation Economy. “We know how we’re going to do it, and we’re very confident about how we’re going to do it, and it’s not necessarily in our interest to tell people how we’re going to do it.”
Some of the comments are as good or even better than the article itself.
“I just posted this (originally as a comment on Fred Wilson’s blog)in answer to yet another call from people asking how Twitter will monetize? Amazingly, people STILL just don’t get it.”
This article makes great sense. It’s the best analogy I’ve yet to hear, Twitter is the infrastructure to build upon, like railroad tracks. What this article doesn’t address is that there were more than one railways company, and Twitter is just one micro-blogging service. It’s WAY too early in the game to declare Twitter the winner… but I agree that Twitter is definitely the fastest horse out of the gate.
“In the future, searches won’t only query what’s being said at the moment, but will go out to the Twitter audience in the form of a question, like a faster and less-filtered Yahoo Answers or Wiki Answers. Users would be able to tap the collective knowledge of the 6 million or so members of the Twitterverse.”
“When Google CEO Eric Schmidt was asked what he thought of Twitter, at a technology conference hosted by Morgan Stanley yesterday, he came out with the following gem: “Speaking as a computer scientist, I view all of these as sort of poor man’s email systems”"
“Eric Schmidt explained on CNBC tonight that he didn’t mean to insult Twitter when he said it was a poor-man’s email system. What he meant, he says, was that people are going to want to use all their different communications systems together.”
“Asked about Schmidt’s comments, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone replied in an email message that Twitter has some similarities to email products, but is really for discovering and sharing what is happening right now.
“We think it’s important to introduce the power of a real-time network to even the weakest of signals around the world—as Twitter grows, we realize it’s not about the triumph of technology, it’s about the triumph of humanity,” said Stone.”
If you’re on Twitter and haven’t heard of TweeterGetter yet, you must have been living in a cave for the past week or so. Love it or hate it, TweeterGetter (I’ll call it TG for short) has become one of the most talked about and retweeted Twitter Web App, and is definitely one of the most controversial Twitter App yet to be launched.
For some reason, the whole concept of TG seems to strike a terrible sounding chord with what Gary McCaffrey @garymccaffrey supposedly called the “Twitter Elitist”. I don’t know for sure what “Twitter Elitists” mean, but I would guess that they are the people who think that their use of Twitter is the “right way” and the only way to use the service, and that they must now defend their way of use of Twitter and everybody else that uses it in any other way is simply uncouth. (wow, I like run-on sentences!
Now for the record and for reasons that will become clear, I have not signed up to use the TG service nor will I in the foreseeable future. Definitely nothing against Gary or his service, on the contrary. I believe that his service is great for getting more followers. But as the article above points out, after it’s first few days of peak activity, it’s not growing exponentially anymore.
Here’s my confession… I’ve programmed this type of service in the past, an exponential friends adder, if you will. I created it for a social networking website, (I cringe at the thought now), Yuwie. Yuwie is a social networking website that shares their ads revenue with their members. It’s a pretty neat concept, and a good way for people to make money. In fact, I’ve thought of exactly that kind of system years ago, but didn’t have the resources to implement it… and you know how that goes when you see someone create the very thing that you envisioned but didn’t/couldn’t act on. Oh, well.
So, instead of creating a Yuwie, when I saw Yuwie, I created a system that does the same thing for Yuwie members as TG does for Twitter. We called in Yuwie Builder.
But Yuwie didn’t have an API like Twitter does. So, adding friends on Yuwie was the old fashioned way of browsing the profile and clicking on the “Add Friend” button.
And as you would have probably guessed, we had the same type of reaction with Yuwie Builder as the way people are now reacting to TG. Most people love it, but of course, there’s the “elitist” folks with the point of view of “I’ll get my followers the old fashioned way, one at a time. Follow, Accept Repeat! Now march on!!”
Overall, the majority of the people that saw our system and used it loved it and were thankful for it!
But few elitist snubbed their noses at it, calling it a scam, an illegal pyramid scheme! When they were asked what they were being scammed out of (it was a free service you know), no answer. We provided a free service with an option to upgrade in the future.
But very quickly, we realized that doing an exponential friends adder service to a site like Yuwie was a lost cause. Why? Well…have you ever seen what Yuwie looks like? To be blunt, it sucks.
That was about 16 months ago… fast forward to today with TG.
Is TweeterGetter a useful service? Does it do what it claims?
I would say “Possibly” and “Theoretically Yes, but but only for a few.”
The Tweet cloud of the people who use TG are people that share the same interest in Marketing, entrepraneur, online, etc…. For Gary and some of the early adopters, it’s succeeding quite well.
Why is it working for only for a few?
Well, it’s not like that math makes it unsustainable. Not by a long shot!
There’s probably about 10,000,000 Twitter accounts/users, so, like this video below says, it’s not saturated, not by a long shot. According to Internet World Stats, http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm there are now over 1.57 billion people online worldwide.
It’s obvious that the best way for TG and other “exponential follower adders” to work is to recruit followers outside of Twitter!
The video below makes a lot of excellent point and is worth watching.
Now before you think I’m a big cheerleader for Gary’s TG, remember, I don’t even use his service, TweeterGetter. But his service provides value to the user, although that “value” can rub a lot of non-users the wrong way. Fair enough, then unfollow and block.
It’s 100% free. It’s completely opt-in, and for that matter, the users places a GREAT amount of trust in that they enter in their Twitter username and password!! So, the tweeps who use Gary are the kind of people that greatly benefits from TG. More power to them. And for those who are offended and want to unfollow and block, more power to you too. It’s natural selection. Bravo for all!!
So why am I not using it?
I see some inherent flaws in the program that I’ll share in later posts, as this one is way longer than I had anticipated it to be. But in my humble opinion that you’re absolutely free to disagree with, while I like the concept (I’ve created one like it), there’s not enough value in the user experience other than getting followers. And some of the users are getting “unfollowed” by the Twitter snobs… errr… “Twitter Elitists”, so it’s a wash.
“Bob the Teacher” addresses a few enhancements that I’ve already thought of. Worth a read.
On to the future….
I’ve been working on and nearly complete with a version of an exponential friends adder that addresses what I feel are the short-comings of TweeterGetter. Namely, the user experience has to be richer, and the value it adds to their Twitter experience has to measured in terms of more than just sheer number of followers.
There’s just a Twitter widget and poll there right now.
I think I have those bases covered pretty well, and when it’s released and I hope you’ll agree. Two things for sure: It will offer A LOT more than TweeterGetter (i.e., community generated content!) and there will be no “Get a bazillion followers in 30 days!” mandatory post!!
The second one… well, that’s the one I’m launching first. It’s a reverse follower adder that let’s you find Tweeps that You Want to Follow … That’s all the details I can release for now, other than the Beta is by invitation only and is limitted to just 10 invites per member. So, no “spammy” about it.
I’m pretty sure it won’t be anywhere near as controversial as TweeterGetter as it provides great value and enrichment and fun to all Twitterers (Tweeps?), new and Elitists alike.
But for better or worse, what do you think about TweeterGetter?
I have a number of friends that want to get on Twitter and really want to start using Twitter for all of it’s glory. I promised them that I would provide them a list of Twitter Apps, Tools and Websites, and Tutorials for Do’s and Don’ts to help them get ramped up quickly.
So, I’m compiling a list of Productivity Tools for Twitter Newbies. Yeah, I know that they can go to http://twitter.com/downloads for a quick list and to http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Apps for an extensive list, but that’s a HUGE list, with no user review, so just like I would do, they would have to dive into an ocean of apps to get to the perls of usable, functional apps.
So I posted on Twitter for help, and so far, here’s some of the helpful tips so far:
Kewl. It’s a start. I use Twitpic.com and TweetLater.com. TweetDeck is too CPU intensive for my system until I upgrade and I’m not interested in ViralTweets.com. And I’ll have to lookup MyTwitter Toolbar.
Other than that… what are your favorite Twitter Apps, Tools, Websites, and Tutorials?
1. @Replies to other people’s Tweets - I try to reply to everyone’s replies as much as I can, especially if it’s question. If you @reply me with a comment, I’ll still reply if I have time and it seems appropriate.
2. Health and Wellness - I talk about my journey from 100% Raw Vegan diet and back again. Also my exercise regiment.
3. Current Events: Science, Economics and Politics - I keep up with the political scene and it’s effects on the economy. Some of what I post would have been considered “conspiracy theories” this time last year, now, it’s in the headlines. How times change.
4. Spirituality and New Age Fringe Material - I love learning and expanding my knowledge on all things spiritual, after all, we’re all Spiritual beings having a Human experience. How boring life would be if all there really was to “reality” was what the general population believe it to be.
5. Polls - I like to know what people think, so I post polls on everything.
6. Auto-Tweets from Blogs - I love WordPress and all the plugins available, especially the wp-poll and TweetSuite. I have several blogs that I post each of the different topics in.
7. Personal Empowerment - We all feed off and grow from positive affirmation and good vibes that we send out. It’s my way of contributing to that and helping raise global consciousness.
8. Business campaigns - My goal is to totally work and generate my income from online business. I haven’t been posting about this topic so much, as my site is still in the development and Beta stage.
9. Social Media and Twitter - Who doesn’t love Twitter and all the social media and mashups. Social media and social referring is the wave of the online future that’s here right now.
10. Personal - My own thing…. like… ”excited to pick up my kids”, “getting off work”, etc. I don’t post these that often.
11. Humor - Gotta laugh at it all… can’t take life too seriously!
I created this blog to stuff about Twitter and stuff. :-)
At the time of this writing, I’m currently following 2,000 Tweeps, the maximum allowed by Twitter until I also reach 2,000 Followers.
Twitter put this rule in to help cut down on fake/spam accounts. It’s a minor nuisance for the rest of us, but it’s not that big a deal.
So, if I can’t follow you right away, that’s why.
I’m creating a “Twitter Follower Adder” that will hopefully fix that very soon. Please let me know which of these domain names you like the best. Thanks.
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