Twitter makes first revenue, courtesy of Microsoft
Fans of Twitter will no doubt be aware of the trouble the micro-blogging service has had instigating a viable business plan. Although the company is valued at around $250 million, it hasn’t actually made a cent in revenue. Until now.
Regular Twitter users will have already noticed the little box in their sidebar which is currently pointing to Twitter Search. As soon as this was spotted in the wild, many made educated guesses that it wouldn’t be just an information box for long. Instead, it would be the perfect first step towards advertising on the Twitter profile pages.
That now looks more likely than ever with the news that Twitter is officially supporting a new venture called ExecTweets. According to Media Memo, Microsoft, via its Federated Media ad network, is sponsoring this Twitter offshoot that focuses exclusively on what company executives are tweeting.
ExecTweets isn’t part of Twitter, rather a completely separate entity made possible by open API, which allows third parties to create apps using data coming from Twitter. But ExecTweets has asked for official support and promotion from Twitter in exchange for a revenue-sharing deal; the details of which are as yet unknown.
I’m not too sure on the actual point of ExecTweets. The whole reasoning behind Twitter is that each individual can follow people that interest them. ExecTweets takes that luxury away to a certain extent by compiling the tweets of selected business execs into one place. And these tweets aren’t sorted by company specific talk, so as well as hearing Richard Branson or Kevin Rose talking about their latest company ventures, you may also find out what they ate for breakfast that day.
Despite my reservations over the need for ExecTweets to even exist, this coupling could be an important day for Twitter. Both companies could make revenue from the art of micro-blogging, and if successful, this could prompt other companies to follow suit. What’s more, if Twitter users accept the presence of this small advertising box in their profiles, Twitter could then roll-out bigger and potentially more intrusive advertising efforts.
Microsoft is offering Twitter its first revenue stream, but I very much doubt whether it’ll be the last.
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