“Social networking was supposed to be the Net’s next rocket to riches. But many social sites are having trouble capitalizing on their audiences, and it’s looking like the convivial atmosphere that promised to boost the value of commercial messages may actually diminish it.” (Conde Naste)…but I have the solution! I figured it all out: How to make Twitter money?
Defining The Issue
I know this is a rather “racy” topic, but everyones talking about twitter. If you don’t know what Twitter is by now, let me sum up in 140 characters or less: Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users updates known as tweets of up to 140 characters in length. Sound crazy? Let the #’s do the talking:
- November 2008 : Forrester Research - Twitter had 4-5 million users
- February 2009: Compete.com – Twitter is the 3rd largest social network
- March 2009: Nielsen.com – Twitter is the fastest growing social network (1382%)
Yet at the end of the day, only 1 number really counts: REVENUE! The problem is, “Twitter makes a negligible amount of revenue from users that send and receive messages as SMS texts, and overall loses an undisclosed amount of money.” (Wired)
Solutions in Progress
So, it has been 3 years and Twitter finally serves up some ads…well kind of. On March 16th, as reported by Adrants, “Twitter, has finally incorporated ads on the pages of its website. The rather unobtrusive text ads are cutely marked up as dictionary entries and appear in a sidebar below a user’s stats and above their thumbnail mosaic of followed users”. 7 days later, the Business Insider (Silicon Alley Insider) points out yet another revenue stream. Twitter “will offer promotional space on Twitter.com to ExecTweets, a Web site that aggregates tweets from business executives, organized by ad network Federated Media”. It should look promising, but it still feels like Twitter is avoiding untapped potential. “Twitter — whose user base is exploding — certainly has many potential revenue-generating options at its disposal, including ads, premium accounts, corporate user verification, etc.” (Business Insider)…well, they couldn’t be more right!
My Solution? “TwittErotica.com”
In May 12th 2007, TechCrunch made a very strong statement:
“Usually the porn industry innovates first and key features make their way to more mainstream sites. But over the last couple of years, many of the new ideas around web applications, like user generated content, video sharing, etc., went mainstream first and are now hitting the porn sites.” (TechCrunch)
For the first time, porn geeks and horny affiliates were in the back seat. Some examples of this included a user-generated porn YouTube clone called Pornotube.com, as well as a few others like EroShare.com and ScrewTube.com. 2007 provided a year of innovation for online pornography.
“The Web has been a goldmine for pornographers — 2007 revenue from porn sites in the U.S. alone was more than $13 billion, and almost $100 billion worldwide.” (Morning Sentinal)
Compared to $2.84 billion generated in 2006, that’s almost 500% more than the previous year! So what’s stopping the porn industry from copying Twitter? If it worked for PornoTube, then it will work for “TwittErotica.com”. In fact, one porn-trepeneur has already started their own version in early 2008: Boobik.com.
The problem is, both Gawker and TechCrunch immediately coined it the “Twitter of Porn”, and I feel someone else could do a better job…and I think someone else is! Someone already bought the name TwittErotica.com. If you’re the owner and you’re reading this, “YOU ARE SITTING ON A GOLDMINE!” At first, I thought you may already be on twitter and it so happens there is a “@Twitterotica” username. Not sure if they’re related.
You’re probably asking yourself? Why is Joshua spilling the beans on a billion dollar idea? I really don’t know the answer to that besides saving my family name (Russak) from embarrassment. Though, I don’t think they’d mind once I have enough money to buy an Island in Dubai.
Posted under Online Marketing, SEO/SEM, Social Networks
This post was written by Joshua Russak on April 6, 2009
Tags: AdRants, Alley Insider, Business Insider, Compete.com, Conde Naste, eroshare, Forrester Research, Internet porn, Morning Sentinal, Nielsen.com, Online Porn, Pornhub, pornotube, screwtube, Silicon Alley Insider, TechCrunch, Twitter, Wired
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