Why Twitter Needs It’s “Facebook Pages” Moment

Twitter February 23, 2011 10 Comments

Believe it or not there was a time a coupe of years ago when people looked at Facebook in the same way as it does Twitter now in terms of making money. People forget these things pretty quickly but there was a time when many doubted if Facebook could ever monetize. They’d played with banner ads and other forms of monetization but were burning through cash in pretty much the same was as Twitter are now. The comparisons are striking because both sites had the massive growth, huge amounts of data, high valuations and plenty of investment but very little revenues. It was almost as if overnight Facebook decided to “turn revenue on” but it was the launch of Facebook pages followed by the like button that really accelerated things and I’m wondering where Twitter are going to find a similar moment…

You Wouldn’t Buy Twitter Followers

The beauty of Facebook’s revenue model is that there are people willing to buy likes and push customers to their page within Facebook. Amazingly Facebook have conceived a platform where people pay to be pushed from one area of it to another. Getting followers on the other hand on Twitter is a much easier affair. You can manually game the system and pick up pretty much as many as you want and there are even sites offering to sell them as packages. Crucially though 99% of people realize that there is little value in having huge amounts of fake followers and the click through rates are shocking with most just being spam fake accounts. The same applies to Twitter’s suggested users product in my opinion because I just wouldn’t buy Twitter followers even if they are being served up by Twitter’s algorithms through targeted advertising and I’d never really suggest a brand does either.

First Steps Being Taken

In fairness to Twitter they have already started taking the steps to creating the self service advertising platform that they really need. You can register for interest and plenty of brands are already running promoted tweets and promoted accounts but I just don’t think it’s the killer advertising model that Facebook or a Google Adwords have.

The Key Lies In The Data

Twitter has more than enough users and crucially more than enough data to make money. It’s pretty much how the Internet works. Just like Facebook figured it out there is a good chance Twitter will too. The answer might lie in search or even local search but there is no doubt that the efforts to date are not the killer revenue stream yet but when you have the amount of users, data and smart minds that Twitter has there is a good chance they’ll figure it out. Just like Facebook it might be a completely new feature that unlocks revenue in a way that we could never have imagined.

Business Dashboard

The problem for Twitter is it’s simplicity. Well it’s not a problem because that is what has made it the success that it is today but it limits what they can do massively. Facebook is a platform where they can introduce new products, features and services on a daily basis without annoying people but because of the nature of Twitter they just can’t do that. I do think the answer lies in some sort of business dashboard or premium business profile. The same way that Facebook pages came along there needs to be a distinction between personal and business pages for Twitter to make huge money. It needs great analytics and insights and to be as useful to small local businesses as it is to large international brands. It’s not an easy ask but just like Facebook cracked it I’m pretty sure Twitter have enough data and users to do the same.

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