BLOG: Can Twitter start making money?
HERE'S the latest from LD Creative blogger Dougal Paver:
NEWS that Twitter may be about to launch an advertising resource targeting its 75m global users has caused a flutter among techies.
It would, wouldn't it? After all, when that many people get hooked on something for free persuading them to stump up for it at some point is darned hard. Just ask newspaper proprietors.
For all Murdoch's chutzpah about his pending pay-wall for his News International stable, including The Times and Sun, on-line readership habits show a remarkable promiscuity, not to mention ideological flexibility.
Put another way, readers are happy to skip from the Telegraph to the Guardian in search of free, quality content - and that being so, my bet is on few people paying to access the Times when the same information is free elsewhere, irrespective of the editorial slant.
The sheer destructiveness of the web is the consumer's greatest friend. Techies invent then re-invent compelling services like Twitter and fling 'em out there for free. Why? Perhaps in the hope that in taking hold they create a valuable niche that can earn serious money. Working out how to unlock the serious money is now Twitter's great challenge.
Advertising seems the most likely route and given how Twitter's search service, via Tweetdeck, works, it could be on to a serious winner.
Good luck to them, I say, and thanks for the invention - it's bloody marvellous.
Dougal Paver is managing director of Paver Smith in Liverpool
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Alistair Houghton
LDP Business reporter Alistair Houghton brings you the latest news and views from the creative sector in Merseyside. Get in touch if you've got a story you want to tell
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