As the Twitter swell surges so has the conversation about monetizing the 140-character tweets. Will this make it easier for the already resource strapped PR professionals or more difficult? Will Twitter start to gather demographic information so messages can more effectively be targeted?
According to the Wall Street Journal article Mashable Chief Executive Pete Cashmore is quoted saying “It’s kind of ironic that we’re monetizing Twitter before Twitter.” For a stand-alone service like Twitter how will their growing market respond? The charm of the Google model is the ability to develop services without a direct pass along to the end user rather through reinvest of advertising revenue for development.
Along with many of our PR peers, my BurrellesLuce colleagues and I are tweeting away and really enjoying ourselves. However, I’m left with more questions than answers about this developing medium. Will @scobleizer have the most revenue potential since he has reciprocal following practices allowing him multiple channels of communication with his sphere of influence? And most importantly will Twitter really be able to “follow the money” or jump the shark?
