Twitter's money-making mystery

Twitter's money-making mystery

By: John Davidson, Singapore
Published: Jul 09, 2009

Global - Twitter is rising rapidly as a social media phenomenon, but as it grows questions emerge about its revenue model. Marketing speaks to media, digital and other industry experts to get their views on how to monetize Twitter.

News Corporation head and media giant Rupert Murdoch stated recently that he is not interested in buying Twitter because it has yet to create a sustainable way to make money. Murdoch purchased MySpace in 2005 for US$580 million.

David Wang, online marketing consultant with Buzzmedia, believes it will be agencies and their clients who will pay money for Twitter because it "provides a real time pulse of what's going on".
"The market for brand monitoring tools, social media monitoring tools is really exploding but you can only track so much. You can only track what's publicly viewable on the Twitter timeline but I think if Twitter puts together a system that gives you demographics as well as location, stuff like that, advertisers and agencies will find that very useful and be willing to pay for that," Wang said.

"They won't charge consumers. Except maybe for the verified accounts. There have been several cases where celebrities have been cheesed off that someone has been impersonating them. So Twitter did say they are going to introduce verified accounts where you can pay a fee and they sort of put a badge on your Twitter profile which says ‘this guy is who he says he is'."
Jay Oatway, Hong Kong's Twitter Evangelist and social media consultant, said Twitter is changing civilisation "as we know it".

"It's altering the fabric of our culture and the way we communicate. It's more than just a business. Twitter is indirect monetisation to build personal relationships. It's a tool not a tool-bridge. It's something different," he said.

Patrick Stahlem, Asia Pacific CEO of Aegis Media, said social media platforms like Twitter "will need to develop new commercial models based on transactions and/or referrals".
"The challenge is to get the ad industry to support this development," he said.
David Ko, executive VP Asia Pacific for Waggener Edstrom Worldwide Hong Kong, believes whether Twitter can make dollars or whether you can monetise it, they're missing the point because Twitter is a platform on which you can build a different business limited only by your imagination.

"The power of Twitter comes from the connections that are built on this platform and even if there's no clear vision on how Twitter can make money from these connections now - just wait for the right killer application on Twitter to come along," he said.

Euan Wilcox, business director at Singapore digital agency The Upper Storey, described monetizing Twitter as "a big problem". Wilcox, whose agency was behind the recent "Swarm" campaign using Twitter for Dell, said most Twitter posts are "useless - and at best others are editorially selected rehash of other people's views or posts".

"But one I know of that starts to go down the path of monetization is glamourpusslife. The idea is simple - to aggregate real world shopping specials and offers through-out Singapore, that focus is important - most are not focused," Wilcox said.

"Glamourpuss is a Marketing/PR & Distribution company focused on women - so they are always out in the stores and gets to know bargains and discounts - a lot of the time before others. The monetization comes with scale and audience, where eventually Twitter - like any media - is a useful clearance channel for stores in Singapore. The revenue model is either paid for placement or percentage of a sale."

Thang Han-Ni, former corporate director of marketing and communications for Berjaya Hotels & Resorts, is not a fan of Twitter and believes the micro-blogging service will struggle to maintain its growth spike.

"I think Twitter is a one hit wonder and maintaining its altitude will be a challenge. I see that it's popularity is dwindling in Malaysia," she said.

By: John Davidson, Singapore
Published: Jul 09, 2009
MARKETING INTERACTIVE