Twitter - A Business Plan. What a Good Idea!

I read with some amazement, but not surprise, about the twitter about Twitter from the Wall Street Journal's allthingsD conference. It turns out that though Biz Stone and Evan Williams may have over 30 million unique visitors, they have no business plan. That's right. No idea how they are going to make money. The Wall Street Journal calls out that Twitter is "facing pressure to prove it has staying power, as a good number of users lose interest in the service after trying it for a while". The WSJ also notes that "after an hour on the D stage no clear business plan emerged". One idea offered by Evan Williams was charging commercial users of Twitter to verify their Twitter accounts so, say Dunkin' Donuts could pay to ensure fans don't get messages from impostors. Really! Charge companies to make sure their brand doesn't get screwed up. You'd think that would be a given. I can imagine the conversation -"I'm sorry Mr. Immelt that people are getting fake messages from General Eclectic, but you didn't pay your bill this month".

Now I've come to accept that businesses don't have to make money in their early growth stage, particularly internet companies trying to get eyeballs. But I have a harder time imagining that even the VCs didn't force the guys to think through why they existed, what they wanted to achieve with their business, and how they were going to monetize. I have an idea. How about charging anyone to tweet when they have a certain number of followers. It can be a sliding scale. You have 500 followers? Pay $50 a month. 5000 followers? Pay $1,000 a month. Or some other pay scale. The point is that if you've got followers, you are establishing a brand for yourself, and that's probably your goal. And just like in any other medium, it costs money to build a brand.

That will be $1,000 for my advice, Twister. I mean Twitter. You should have payed your bill. :)

Blackberry App 'World'?

I recently downloaded and started using Blackberry's ironically named App 'World'. Now the world is a big place, and I expect a lot of great applications - which is a high bar given the existence of apps on the itunes store. 'Amazon' is a good name for Amazon.com, because it implies its a very big place, like the real Amazon. And it lives up to that name. That having been said, it's a pretty decent app for searching and downloading apps directly to the blackberry.

However, my problem is simple. Why wouldn't RIM make a compelling web site to accompany the Blackberry app? Searching on the Blackberry is not that convenient. I'd much prefer that I had a website that I could go to and easily search and find applications, as well as what other users had to say about the apps. The itunes store enables this on the web. If you want to compete with the best, at least copy their best features. My Blackberry Bold is a great device - great audio, great video capabilities, although the camera is disappointing. It can't be everything that an iphone is, but an iphone can't be everything that a blackberry is. If RIM wants to be able to compete with an iphone, they really have to nail the applications. They need lots of them, and cheap. But they also need world class tools to access them. Kirk out.