Twitter to Charge for Premium Services
It looks like at the All Things Digital Conference yesterday that Evan Williams hinted towards actually moving the company towards some type of profitability in the future. It doesn’t appear right at the moment that they have their plans solidified but it is definitely on the horizon…
“There will be a moment when you can fill out a form or something and give us money,” – Evan Williams, Twitter co-founder and CEO
That sounds a lot like a registration form with a tie in to a Visa account. A lot of people are trying to read between the lines on this one to say that if you look carefully then they say ‘give’ which means its optional. Well, okay maybe, but I come from a strong background in business and my business sense tells me that that makes no sense. Waiting for people to donate has never been a particularly strong avenue for raising capital.
Even the other Twitterites like Stone know that they have got a good thing and are probably missing out on a huge opportunity if they don’t strike while the iron is hot.
“Pretty soon, everybody’s going to hate us.” – Stone
That’s right buddy…if you guys don’t get your act together you are going to be the Telletubbies of the Internet world. Well, except for the fact that the Telletubbies made like a bizillion dollars….Pretty soon people are not even going to want to invest in these companies because they don’t look at the bottom line enough. Sure they raised another $35 million in February but it’s comments like this that is going to make that market dry up pretty damn quickly. At some point in time, these people have got to realize that investors will eventually want a return on their investment.
Cheers,
AJ