Twitter: A fine 'pre-business' but un-monetizable and a deadly acquisition target

Re:Twitter: A fine 'pre-business' but un-monetizable and a d... by swombat on Monday March 16, 2009 @05:43PM (#518847)

The ones that do make money all seem to involve either mailing stuff to people who have paid for it online or getting advertising deals from the likes of General Motors.

What kind of web analyst misses out on the slew of other online monetisation strategies and dares make such a ridiculous statement?

I find the whole argument dubious. I'm pretty sure that there are many potential monetisation strategies for Twitter, most of which the analyst couldn't think of, apparently. I don't really want it to be bought, but I don't think it would be a bad purchase for, say, Google.

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Re:Twitter: A fine 'pre-business' but un-monetizable and a d... by tptacek on Monday March 16, 2009 @07:57PM (#519019)

Your argument, which might be strong, would be evidently strong if you could cite a couple cases where a large "pre-monitized" turned out to be lucrative for an acquirer.

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Re:Twitter: A fine 'pre-business' but un-monetizable and a d... by dangoldin on Monday March 16, 2009 @08:57PM (#519117)

I can think of Summize which became Twitter search.

It doesn't necessarily make Twitter any more money but I do think they're getting a lot more growth because of it.

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Re:Twitter: A fine 'pre-business' but un-monetizable and a d... by omarchowdhury on Monday March 16, 2009 @09:40PM (#519190)

Your best example is a derivative startup?

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Re:Twitter: A fine 'pre-business' but un-monetizable and a d... by tptacek on Monday March 16, 2009 @09:32PM (#519176)

How much do you think Summize went for? 500k? $1MM at the outside? Is that really the best counterexample we've got?

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Re:Twitter: A fine 'pre-business' but un-monetizable and a d... by wallflower on Monday March 16, 2009 @11:45PM (#519347)

I remember Summize was rumored to have gone for $15m in cash and Twitter stock.

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Re:Twitter: A fine 'pre-business' but un-monetizable and a d... by tptacek on Tuesday March 17, 2009 @08:31AM (#519779)

The entire round of funding Twitter took just prior to buying Summize was $15MM.

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Re:Twitter: A fine 'pre-business' but un-monetizable and a d... by swombat on Tuesday March 17, 2009 @06:32AM (#519703)

Wouldn't blogger.com count? I'm sure they're making a fair amount from slapping adverts on it, not to mention all the user data harvesting.

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