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Twitter is Not a Social Network

January 15, 2011

One of the biggest misconceptions about Twitter I think is that it is a social network like Facebook. The founders have indicated T witter is not a social networ k, and is in fact geared toward real-time search. The fact is , Twitter and Facebook are completely different in my mind. Twitter has turned “Search” (and the RSS feed) into a human generated activity with sharing information. More importantly, using Twitter applications like Hoot Suite or Tweet Deck we can search on Twitter on any topic-- even ourselves. From there, we can find valuable links to information that people are tweeting about topics we are interested in.

What will get me a bit fired up is when I read Google should buy Twitter because of the amount of money being poured into Facebook. These two platforms are completely different and do not compete against each other -- because Twitter is not a social network. So that logic makes no sense. Now if an analyst wrote Google should buy Twitter to extend its Search services I would see a bit more of the logic, than just the arms race mentality that is now going on between Google and Facebook, along with reading the ramblings of an analyst that is just getting upset that Google is not buying Twitter to jack up its stock price.

However, Google has already started to bake in real-time relevant Tweets into its search stream (its good to see the Internet is still “open” in that regard). The challenge for Twitter I think will be how it can generate revenue as it costs continue to rise to support this service. Both Google and Facebook receive most (if not all) of their income on targeted ads that appear on the side of the screen. Much of the discussion around Twitter involves the same thought process, which is why you are starting to see “sponsored tweets”.

I am not sure how Twitter can generate serious revenue, but I have some ideas. My hunch is this might be the first model that does not totally rely on ramming “targeted” ads down our throat -- at least not initially because most people access Twitter through 3rd party applications or their mobile phone. Revenue could very well come in terms of a revenue share on advertising, a model that Groupon has used to perfection, where for instance someone tweets a link to a video – which would have advertising running before the video runs – the advertiser would pay Twitter and the content producer some sort of fee because the visit came through Twitter. Or beyond advertising, someone selling something using Twitter has to pay a percentage the sale if of a conversion starts through Twitter.

Or at a higher level since Twitter is such a valuable service to bloggers and publishers in terms of driving traffic to their sites, perhaps Twitter begins to capture some of the ad revenue that a publisher is generating through the page views Twitter is generating for its readers. I understand there are holes in this idea, because not everyone tweets things that will run advertising and will big publishers still be willing to use Twitter if they had to share some of the revenue Twitter traffic generates form them? This is more of an attempt at trying to think of the typical model that exists and also recognizing that at some point services on the Internet need a way to generate revenue to survive.

The fact of the matter is at some point a revenue model will have to arise for Twitter for it to survive. It has become such a valuable (and awesome) service that I hope the “geeks” over there can figure that out soon. I argue with some friends that I actually think Twitter is better than Facebook because Twitter allows us to find information we might not find in just a Google search. That is just me, I like to find new things. And there is a human element to Twitter, allowing us to share things we find interesting and it just not an algorithm sending us information. Sure it is great to read a status update on Facebook about how my friends so I can see they are doing, and it provides a great platform for me to complain when my favorite sports teams are not playing well – which is why Facebook is fun. Twitter is about sharing and finding information we might not otherwise come across, which is also fun.

Tags: Facebook , Real Time Search , Twitter

Categories: RSS, Social Networking

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