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. :)