Twitter confirma contas pagas
O Twitter confirmou pela primeira vez que vai criar contas comerciais. Empresas pagarão uma taxa para ter acesso a ferramentas exclusivas. Em entrevista ao Wall Street Journal, o seu co-fundador Biz Stone disse que a companhia contratou um gerente de produto para desenvolver essas contas sem especificar quais seriam as novas ferramentas exclusivas ou uma data para seu lançamento. As contas gratuitas continuarão disponíveis para pessoas comuns e empresas, no entanto sem as tais ferramentas adicionais. “Queremos trabalhar com as empresas que já estão lá”, disse Stone.
Companhias como Jet Blue e Comcast já usam o serviço de microbloggin e suas mensagens de 140 caracteres prestar serviços a clientes, divulgar seus produtos e oferecer promoções. A fabricante de computadores Dell declarou que já faturou mais de US$ 1 milhão com ofertas listadas no site.
Criado há três anos, o Twitter ainda não conseguiu capitalizar em cima de seu sucesso de crítica e da explosão do seu número de usuários (atualmente em 9,8 milhões segundo o comScore; em fevereiro, eram pouco mais de 6 milhões). A empresa vem experimentando com anúncios de texto na lateral dos perfis que, até o momento, divulgam os seu próprios serviços e outros relacionados. Atualmente a empresa está avaliada em US$ 225 milhões segundo fontes do WSJ.
http://tecneira.com.br/epocanegocios/2009/03/25/twitter-confirma-contas-pagas/
Firms Seek Profit in Twitter's Chatter
In the three years since its launch, the messaging service Twitter has attracted millions of users, but its fast growth hasn't translated into significant revenue.
Now, other companies are trying to profit from Twitter's popularity by experimenting with business models that incorporate parts of the free messaging service.
Twitter allows users to broadcast 140-character messages, known as "tweets," that other users can subscribe to, or "follow." Users can read the messages on Web sites, through custom Twitter-reading software and on their mobile phones.
The service's users run the gamut from publicity-seeking celebrities to moms who want to stay abreast of their children's schedules. Some enterprising users have even found ways to earn money by tweeting product endorsements.
More recently, businesses have gotten into the act, brokering ads to appear alongside tweets filtered by topic, such as the Academy Awards, or helping brands promote themselves on Twitter.
German start-up Magpie & Friends has started paying users for the right to sell ads in their tweets. The company uses an auction system in which potential advertisers bid on keywords they want to associate with their ads -- like iPhone or NCAA.
Magpie looks for tweets about these topics among Twitter users who have signed up with it and, with permission, sends the winning bidders' ads into those users' message streams, to be seen by their followers. Advertisers typically pay from a few cents to around $13 per ad, and Magpie splits the proceeds with the user.
So far, none of the companies piggybacking on Twitter has reaped a windfall, but their strategies suggest some ways that Twitter -- which was valued at $255 million in connection with a recent round of venture funding, according to people familiar with the matter -- might go about cashing in on its growing ranks of users.
But in pursuit of revenue, Twitter faces the same challenge that has dogged social-networking platforms like Facebook. If advertisers can tap into its network free of charge, why would they pay the company to do so?
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone says the San Francisco start-up is watching the outside initiatives closely as it prepares to launch its own fee-based services this year, but doesn't view them as competition. "We want to work with those companies that are already making an effort," he says.
Mr. Stone says Twitter recently hired a product manager to oversee the development of commercial accounts. The accounts would offer users more features in exchange for a fee, but Mr. Stone says Twitter hasn't set a launch date for them.
Twitter will get a cut of one outside business that sprang up this week, a Web site called ExecTweets. The site, launched by online advertising network Federated Media, displays tweets from business executives.
Microsoft Corp. is the sole sponsor the site, which touts the software maker's role with a "Brought to You by Microsoft" label. Federated plans to share some of the sponsorship revenue with Twitter, according to both companies. Federated says it plans to work with brand advertisers on other Twitter-related sites.
Others are trying to extract revenue from Twitter on their own. This month, Glam Media, an online-ad network and lifestyle Web site, plans to announce a new site and service that will filter and package tweets according to their themes. It intends to sell ads on these theme pages and to the share revenue with other Web sites that make its packages available on their sites, says Glam Chief Executive Samir Arora.
Glam tested the service during the Academy Awards in February. In the test, skin-care brand Aveeno, which is owned by Johnson & Johnson, sponsored a widget, or small software application, on Glam's Web site that highlighted tweets about the Oscars. Among the tweets from users: "I want to know how all those actresses stay so skinny."
Glam's Mr. Arora says the model is a new way to use news and events to make money online. "Live events have moved to the Web, but you need packaging of the content," he says. To give its packages more polish, Glam will combine the Twitter messages with other media like video.
Mashable, a blog that covers online social media, recently began soliciting brands to pay to have their tweets featured on its Web site, alongside other banner ads. JetBlue and MailChimp, which manages email marketing campaigns, signed up for the sponsorships; Mashable Chief Executive Pete Cashmore declines to disclose the price they paid. "It's kind of ironic that we're monetizing Twitter before Twitter," he says.
As Twitter's growth explodes, speculation has intensified about whether the service can be profitable. Twitter's online traffic, excluding cellphones, surged to nearly 9.8 million unique visitors in February from 6.1 million in January, according to comScore.
Fred Wilson, a Twitter investor and board member who is a partner at Union Square Ventures, says Twitter will make money by "following the money," or building on the ways that others are developing businesses based on the service.
Write to Jessica E. Vascellaro at jessica.vascellaro@wsj.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123793945676332341.html
