In an earlier post I mentioned Twitter as an example of a “Bubble 2.0” company because it has a seemingly flawed (or no) business model. My (rhetorical) question was “How do you make money by sending free text messages to people?”
Well today Twitter announced it is stopping the UK outgoing SMS service beacuse it can cost up to $1,000 per user per year and they simply can’t afford it anymore. Well, the comments on Techcrunch aren’t pretty which is no big surprise.
If this isn’t an example of how the “get a community and then find a way to make money” approach is flawed then I don’t know what is. By not having a clear business model (=how Twitter makes money; =how Twitter survives) at the beginning, Twitter has now irreversably put itself in the unenviable position where it must alientate users to survive.
I hope I’m wrong (because I love Twitter) but it seems that the company might be slowly inching itself towards the Dead Pool.
What are your thoughts?
Update: I don’t mean to say that it’s impossible to make money by sending free text messages to people. I can immediately think of a few ways off the top of my head. I just think that Twitter didn’t really think it through in the beginning that’s all.
Richard Muscat 