14 DAY TRIAL // After months of speculation, telling us what it won't do and infirming rumors coming from its investors, it looks like Twitter is finally ready to show us its business plan. Well, not so fast. While Co-founder Biz Stone says Twitter will make some money this year from companies like Dell Inc., Whole Foods Market Inc. and Starbucks Corp, he doesn't exactly specify how.
“The idea is if they are getting value out of Twitter then we could add more value to what they are doing and we could get some revenue,” Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone tells Bloomberg. “We think we’ll get to something this year, however simple, that shows we’re making some money.”
And that is pretty much it. Stone puts forward several options, which we've mostly heard before, like verified accounts and some features targeted at large businesses, but it's hard to imagine Twitter making large sums from these revenue streams. It could charge companies for offering verified accounts, confirming their identity for the customers, and could also offer detailed statistics about their tweets. Another payed feature could be multiple accounts for large businesses with several branches or divisions. But all of these don't really add up to that much cash.
In fact, while Twitter is the hottest social media platform today, success stories from businesses using the micro-blogging service are few and far between. Recently, Dell announced it made $3 million in sales with its Twitter account, but is that a success story for a company with sales of $12 billion in the first quarter alone? A proof of concept at best. And Twitter didn't see any of that money, in fact, it's still to make any money at all. But the fact is it can afford not to. With its bank accounts stashed with investor money, Twitter can sit back, take its time, and come up with a truly original business plan, which, coupled with its more than 18 million-user base, could prove a big money maker for the company.