The question of how Twitter is going to manage to make money has been floated for the last year or so. Twitter is gaining in popularity to the extent that it is finding mainstream users well beyond the early adopter sphere. That so-called “hockey stick” moment, where unique visitors go off the charts, is happening right now.

So what does Twitter do to make money? Banner ads are a possibility, but is that the best they can come up with? Charging for enterprise Twitter makes sense. But what else?

The answer may be with analytics. Facebook has it pretty easy: they have categories in user profiles that can be easily scanned to serve up contextual ads. They are pretty effective. But what if Twitter measured the tweets somehow, and gave that information up for a price? Would the be user privacy revolt? How would the the ads be served? Same as Facebook? What else could the information be used for?

This could be the next step for Twitter, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out. One thing is certain: when it comes to monetizing social networks, the line between too much intrusion and ineffective monetization is always a very big deal.

Story via Taylor Buley at Forbes.com

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 14th, 2009 at 10:45 pmand is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.