5 Twitter Business Models

Twitter just raised $35 M from Spark, and everyone thinks that Spark is idiotic because Twitter cannot monetize.

While I do not claim to have the definitive answer, here are 5 ways Twitter can make money that they are currently not doing.

1. Contextual Ads

Twitter should scrape all the data and figure out the keywords that people use the most in their Tweets. Then they should sell ads like Facebook that are contextual.

2. Add ads to Tweets

Think SMS + ads.

3. Twitter Gifts

Virtual Goods to friends. When Facebook launched this everyone thought they were stupid ... until they pulled $40 M.

4. Premium Direct Messages

Force people to accept premium direct messages. A lot of people want to contact famous people, if they are forced to accept premium direct messages this can provide huge value to followers and make Twitter a lot of money.

5. Yammer

Make an enterprise package. Copy-and-paste Yammer's business model.

PS. Please stop telling me that Rails does not scale because Twitter did not scale. Twitter is not indicative of the potential of Rails.