If I suggested that one company should own and run all the world’s email servers you might think me slightly mad. If I also suggested that Google provide API’s so that I could write applications that use Google’s search engine and data without acknowledgement or payment you might strengthen your view of my madness. Yet this is exactly where we are with Twitter.
Twitter has evolved from a web based messaging application into an infrastructure. Its open API’s have led to an explosion of clients and services. Clients and services that own the user experience and can make money in various ways (including advertising) because of this relationship. It’s no surprise that Twitter says advertising is low on its revenue models. You can’t fund through advertising if you don’t own the eyeballs.
If you own the client then you can use p2p to reduce server needs and costs and rely on premium services to pay for what you do have as Skype does. Twitter doesn’t own the client so can’t do this.
But it’s not alone. As more sites provide API’s and allow content to be accessed and created away from their own Website they also give away their exclusive advertising interface with their members. Control of what is and isn’t shown to the user shifts to the client application. Unless restricted by licence a third party app can filter content in the same way email programs filter out most spam.
We may think of social networks as websites or web applications but in reality they are data repositories storing relationships and content. As more cross social network applications become available this will become more evident. We will see more and more people using Facebook without ever visiting the site just as many of us use Twitter in that way now.
There isn’t a proven business model for funding such repositories yet. In the US TV networks came up with a complicated agreements with their distributors on ad slot sharing but I can’t see this working in Internet space where those distributors might be many and varied.
In the end Facebook and Twitter may be forced to charge a simple subscription. So, how much would you pay for a Facebook or Twitter account?
This post is tagged facebook, socialnetworking, twitter