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Today there has been a fair amount of buzz today about Marc Andreesen’s comment, stated during an interview about his new venture fund, that Facebook should surpass $500 million in revenue this year. It’s not quite a surprise but what’s more interesting is that the company is on the fast track to billions while Twitter, the thorn in Facebook’s side, has yet to bring in any substantial revenue although a few initial advertisers have been buzzed about.
As I previously wrote, Twitter needs to implement Facebook Connect, not only to continue increasing their user base but also the potential for a monetization strategy. Facebook has an existing advertising platform that lets advertisers target ads on a variety of demographic variables. While the CPMs may be low, it would be one option for generating some initial capital in a relatively non-intrusive way.
At this point I’m sure just about any company, including Google, is looking for a deal to help monetize Twitter but so far the company has avoided anything as costs continue to mount. Twitter is just about as large as Facebook was two years ago, but Facebook was at least operating near break-even at the time. Regardless of Twitter’s monetization strategy, Facebook is clearly focused on building in a lot of the features that are included in Twitter but all hopes of killing Twitter have been dashed.
With $500 million in revenue and a recent influx of cash, I’m certain there’s some type of agreement the two companies can come to.
Bitter much?
So Twitter needs to dump their fine, functional, and portable OAuth implementation for a poorly-documented, browser-tied, cookie-based single-sign-on API?
The point is not that Twitter needs to dump it’s current login system, it’s that it needs to offer FB Connect as an alternative, in addition to OAuth….
It would be an INCREDIBLY wise move as far as growing the userbase is concerned.
Perhaps a type of paypertweet codex will become Twitters life blood. Charging the adverts a fee for each tweet containing their ad codes, while rewarding the twittie with eCPM funds, be it digital or real. Heaven knows the marketers are raking it in right now in unregulated click thrus. Companies like RevTwt, Magpie, TwtAD, TweetBucks and the soon IZEA are marching to that drum beat as we speak. I’ve watched these “paypertweet” companies ad ranks swell within mere weeks of starting. Maybe a new kinda of ad revenue will spring up from mind of some 14 year old kid that cashes in on the next big ad-sink. Twitter to me is about innovation and they don’t continue to re-invent things they will wither and die under the crush of big name adhocs like FaceBook and MySpace. These are my personal opinions only and do not reflect on the true intellectualism of much wiser and richer men … PEACE!