How Much Would You Pay for Your Twitter Account? Here's What I Would Pay...
The day appears to be fast approaching when Twitter will offer a paid level of service for some users. It could be just for corporate accounts, it could be just for people with more than a few thousand followers, it probably won't be for even a majority of users.
But imagine if it was required that you, dear reader, had to pay for your Twitter account. "All other things being equal" would be an absurd condition to put on the question; if we all had to pay for our Twitter accounts then we'd probably have fewer friends and the service would be worth less to all of us. As a psychological exercise, though: How much would you pay for your Twitter account?
How Much Would I Pay For My Twitter Account?
I would pay more than $50 per month for my Twitter account, no problem. (My wife just yelled at me when I said that to her.) Is that crazy? I don't think so at all. It's not for some Jason Calacanis-style bulk promotion or anything; I'd pay that much for the impact that the listening and the conversation has on my work.
I pay over $100 every month for phone plus data service; I bet many of you do too. That's a rip-off. Twitter, at least for me and I suspect for a growing number of people in the future, is totally worth $50 per month.
Why? Let me tell you what I do with Twitter. Extrapolate for your own work.
I'm a news writer for a living. Using Twitter, I find news stories to write about -- such good stories, so fast and so often that I wrote a year and a half ago that Twitter is paying my rent. A couple of news tips a month that lead to stories that blow up big on Digg and the investment would be worth it to me.
When I'm working on stories I ask Twitter friends for feedback and get incredible quotes for those stories. A year ago I wrote a story titled APIs and Developer Platforms: A Discussion of the Pros and Cons. I got answers to my questions for that story from people with job titles like Senior Online Editor at CIO.com, Research Director of Web Services at Gartner and 7 different tech company CEOs. All of those "interviews" were done by call-and-response on Twitter. I did it in an afternoon. I never could have written that article using the phone.
We're a blog, so the editorial process here is different from traditional media. We publish first and spell check later. That's some exaggeration, but there's some truth to it too! I regularly get pinged on Twitter by people who tell me about misspellings, broken links or additional details I should look at for my stories. People aren't going to IM me, they aren't going to call or email. They are going to look at an interface that's open throughout the day for them and type nothing more than @marshallk to let me know about what needs to be fixed. That's awesome.
Selective group creation, competitive intelligence, business development, sentiment tracking and data mining horizons are just starting to open up on Twitter. It's a big, dynamic, public, programmatically accessible database of real-time conversation. Would I pay the same monthly fee to access that as I do for telephone service? Hell yeah, I would.
It's Not About Promotion
The fact is, Twitter isn't a terribly effective promotional vehicle. If you're Dell and publishing links to discounted computers, you can make some big sales, but content publishers aren't going to see traffic numbers from Twitter. TechCrunch has a quarter million followers on Twitter and they report referring visitors per month that are probably equivalent to a half day's worth of their total traffic.
It's not about broadcasting your message. It's about listening to a very targeted group of thought leaders in your industry and occasionally interacting with them. Think your industry doesn't have important people using Twitter? Go do some searches at Twellow.com - you'll probably be surprised.
Twitter is an incredible professional development tool. I know that's the case for journalists and I strongly suspect that it is or will be used in the same way in lots of other industries. You show me an industry where you can't find a competitive advantage in learning more, faster and from highly active people in that industry and I'll show you an industry that I at least am thankful I don't work in.
If you don't use Twitter like this, perhaps you've got a limited number of friends and it means something else in your life. That's fine. You probably won't be a candidate for a paid account. If you're interested in professional development and you're not using Twitter like this - that's your loss. That would be like using an iPhone for a doorstop.
There are more open alternatives like Laconica, but Twitter is where probably 10 million people are and lots of industry thought leaders in particular are. Is it worth $50 per month to get the "services" of this "carrier?" It sure is.
You can find ReadWriteWeb on Twitter, as well as the entire RWW Team: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Rick Turoczy, Sean Ammirati, Lidija Davis and Phil Glockner.
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Marshall,
Honestly, I paid for Pownce and all I got back was a $2 refund, so would I pay for twitter? I am guessing YES. BUT in the same token will premium accounts really monetize twitter they need to make money back ($55 Million)? Doubtful.
It's almost the same as Steven over on the inquistr put it the other day about selling t-shirts online. You'll only make so much, and than you are done. Same with this premium accounts idea.
Now if there was a Jason C ponying up $500k for being on some perceived first list, and there was 100 of them or so, hey - twitter would be styling and in the money - or - you could ignore this long winded comment of mine! :)
seriously: yeah, I use twitter a lot, like WAY too much!
If Twitter starts charging, another company, say Google, MySpace or Facebook will simply make an extremely similar service for free and Twitter, which lacks revenue presently, would only stand to lose something it dominates: mindshare.
Thought-provoking as always. Will there be a point where the noise-to-value ratio on Twitter makes it less helpful?
Twitter frustrates me so I would not pay for it. The conversations aren't threaded and it doesn't offer enough features for my liking. If it wasn't for the sheer number of people on it I wouldn't use it. FriendFeed is more to my taste and I might pay $5 a month for FriendFeed.
Greg, I don't think it's that simple. First mover's advantage does mean something, for one thing.
I see where you get real value out of Twitter, but what you did not address is the option of getting that same value out of another service.
If Twitter were to start charging a significant number of users a fee, I think we'll see the most infulential micro-bloggers defect to other services and in turn, they will decide where we all go.
@marshall at some point people will move beyond Twitter. You don't see the majority of the internet population using AOL mail or AIM anymore, do you?
Twitter is lucky to have had a lead this long, but it wont last forever. To think so is short sided.
I am a very big fan of twitter. And, there is no question, on some level, it is worth paying for. It has been THE most productive online networking platform for me to date.
Businesses are flocking to Twitter because there is a certain instant gratification if used properly. But, think of how many people and businesses that do not use twitter...even at it's current price...free. Twitter needs to be careful not to create an opportunity for someone to steal the formula which is working for them; Instant gratification, for free, and not limited to personal use.
That said, I do think it would be quite fair to build some Twitter original extra features and charge for them. Tweetdeck would be a great example. Had that product been created by Twitter, they could easily have charged for it.
I've heard rumor of some sort of CMS mounted on their data. That could be a winner. Maybe that's the way to go.
It's already difficult enough to convey the value of Twitter usage to those who "don't get it." I would not want to see Twitter add another reason for others not to "get it." Having those "others" on Twitter increases value for all.
I hope Twitter is very careful with what they bring out as pay to use. Many folks are investing a lot of time weaving Twitter into their overall online presence. Could be a heavy culture shock to current users.
We shall see.
I love Twitter, but first mover advantage in this case I dont think can carry the day (and not even close!) because they have the PR franchise but they really dont own the technology.
IMHO: They should take a Craigslist approach and keep it humble, keep it uncluttered, keep it free. Same way I responded to the New York Times tech blog back in January when they had a take-over offer.
But its all good food for thought!
I'd pay $25/year for Twitter as a non-business individual account. I suggested this a few months ago when Twitter looked to be in trouble.
1) It'd get rid of most people who get Twitter accounts and then do nothing with them
2) I'd like a tool to purge my list of Followers who haven't used Twitter in the past 30 days.
More features could be tailored for more expensive tiers, but I'd want at least #2 for my $25/year.
If it wasn't for the sheer number of people on it I wouldn't use it. FriendFeed is more to my taste and I might pay $5 a month for FriendFeed.
The way I see it, Twitter's primary, overarching asset is its huge audience. Twitter users provide value to each other AND to Twitter.com. Therefore, current levels of Twitter service should remain free to maintain and grow the pool of users.
As @ev recently promised, basic Twitter services will always be free, so he gets it. Twitter monetization should come from advertising, suitably anonymized audience statistics, OPTIONAL add-on services, and various types of Pro accounts featuring bundles of services and analytics.
It's an amusing thought experiment, but $50 a month would kill Twitter. "All things being equal" is the key - the moment a charge was imposed, nothing would be equal. Twitter relies VERY heavily on network effects, and a $50 fee would crush those effects by driving away A LOT of users. Sure, there are a lot of people who value twitter enough to pay that much, and I'd probably be one of them, but looking at my followers I'd say maybe 30% of them, at most, would join me. If I lose 70% of my contacts, is it still worth $50/month? I doubt it. So I'd pay for a month or two and then quit...
I like your take on it Marshall, the comparison that sprung to my mind was Salesforce, which (while an entirely different beast obviously) is a subscription-model application that companies pay tens of dollars per user per month to use, and often don't use it effectively or at all.
Just as Salesforce can pay for itself many times over if used effectively, so too could Twitter. My concern is that I might end up paying for it and then *not* using it effectively. At least right now, I am not forced make that decision, with it being free and all.
Right now, you enjoy Twitter because you have useful contacts and get high quality information, but Twitter is growing exponentially. Those early-adopter tech CEOs that you prefer will soon be drowned out by massive hordes of teenagers and their mothers.
After this growth spurt has settled, Twitter will be different. It may still be worth a subscription fee of some sort, but I don't think we can tell right now.
On the other hand, if we can keep the teenagers out by charging a fee... that's something I would value! I still wouldn't pay though, LOL.
I think if you made it a paid service it would immediately dwindle. As the poll indicates, more people would rather not pay for it. And a lot of the functionality for many people is piggybacking on cell phones with SMS or data plans--either being updated on the go, or updating people with where I am and thoughts that I had on the run. It will never replace my cell phone's functionality, because it relies so heavily upon that selfsame functionality.
I wouldn't pay for it because, while it's an interesting and useful service, I use it mostly because it's free. It doesn't have the versatility of even a basic cell phone plan: 140 characters at a time is not a replacement for being able to call someone and have a real-time clarification and conversation. A few minutes on the phone can have a much denser exchange of data than Twitter.
And you'd lose a lot of functionality if you had to pay for Twitter. You pick up on stories on Twitter? Supposing the people who write about those stories didn't want to pay? If it cost money, a lot of interesting projects would probably never have their own Twitter accounts--and in many ways Twitter enables these projects to exist.
In essence what I'm saying here is Twitter is only so useful because it's free. Its shapeless simplicity, ease of use, and the fact that it's free, have made it what it is.
Twitter faces a real issue. I suspect its business model was to get mindshare and then get bought by a Google. With the recession that kind of clean exit is no long possible at least in the short term.
The other alternative is to charge for accounts as suggested. It problem is that at a stroke it will put the brakes on its growth and ultimately reduce its future value. There simply aren't sufficient barriers to entry to protect its position.
So how does Twitter steer itself through these difficult times? Sorry but I dont have the answers, but whatever it will involve taking some difficult decisions
We just started letting users find car reviews and scores on our site via Twitter.
http://twitter.com/motormouths
Based on the early stats, it's a feature well worth paying for.
I am a fan but it is hard to start paying for something that you think of as free. If they had premium-type services then I think I could see paying for those (maybe simple things like groups).
But isn't there real opportunity going to be in some kind of search model? The search capability is very cool.
The minute that Twitter starts charging its users paid membership fees, then their decline is imminent. There will be another service like Twitter that emerges to fill the needs of users who don't want to pay. Developing something like Twitter is not cutting-edge, except perhaps in the world of TechCrunch, RWW, O'Reilly Radar plus other news media who think so and are mesmerized by Twitter's service as if it is some kind of state-of-the-art new fibre-optic devise that will change the world's telecommunication forever.
If Google starts charging for its search engine, believe me, the Google brand name is destined to sink down the toilet, but Google knows it would be a business suicidal if it moves in that direction, since users will flock to use the free Live-Search in massive numbers. The accuracy of Live-Search is not that much difference to Google search engine. The main reason people stick to using Google is because of the brand name and less to do with the search.
One thing that people have to consider is that we can live without Twitter but not without a web search engine such as Google or Live Search and this is the main reason that Twitter should be careful about any move to charge its users.
Marshall said...
First mover's advantage does mean something, for one thing.
Marshall, the first movers occupy the top of the pyramid, but they need to keep getting new followers at the bottom (foundation) of the pyramid to maintain their level at the top. The foundation ,ie the users who would highly likely to abandon Twitter if it starts charging its users. Now, tell me this simple fact. When you see a foundation that has been eroding for a while, what would you expect over time? Collapse!!! So, the first movers would be the last to abandon, because there is no point in hanging around there since no one is around. I would call first movers as FILO (first in last out).
Jeff said...
Twitter is lucky to have had a lead this long, but it wont last forever. To think so is short sided.
Agreed 100%.
They should make money from their suggested users list: http://buzznova.com/breaking-news-twitter-unveils-suggested-users-paid-service/
For the record, I did not yell. After all, we were in public :).
The problem is that the group of people that get $50/month worth of value out of Twitter is pretty small. Are there 10K power users that would pony up that much? That's only a $6M/year business. Peanuts compared to what they've invested.
I do not think it is simple to charge twitter users any cents for using this micro-blogging service. Twitter can add ads to twitter user profile and it should remained free of charge otherwise users would leave for Facebook.
I like the hoax news on the BBspot about 4 type of twitter premium accounts
Less than nothing should have been an option. I would gladly pay negative $1.00
Twitter is up to you how to use it. There are no rules, but you do run the potential of pissing people off.
Many companies use Twitter to broadcast those PR messages--a lot of customers don't buy the fact that companies are "actually listening". The social media evangalists are the only ones who get it and aren't freaked out by it.
Either way you've got to listen!
Marshall - While it would probably work over the short term (especially with companies), it would be short-lived. Twitter continues to have the buzz (and return for many) but I agree, over time, it could be replicated. It would dramatically slow Twitter's growth. The recommended follower feature is lame at best and they need to move very cautiously here. Facebook is on a heavy run and much more 'sticky' to a wider market. Friendfeed would need to do but a few tweaks or a parallel (simpler) service and then get the multi-media buzz... and Twitter could take a significant dive in less than a year.
I don't think I would. I did pay for a Pro account on Pownce.
Posted by: Thomas Hawk
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March 25, 2009 10:38 PM
For personal use it is hard for me to pay for a service that was offered free initially. How much ever I loved it. I gave up on my Hotmail account just because Microsoft made it too difficult to use by passport and UI changes. For company use, we evaluated Yammer and have decided to use cyn.in collaboration software, where twitter like micro-blogging service is integrated in such a way that it provides more value to the cyn.in user.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/new_from_cynapse_activity_streams_on_the_company_desktop.php
Is there any feature list of Pro account available? I'd like to know what they offer before I decide if I'm going to pay for this.
Posted by: Pavel
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March 25, 2009 10:45 PM
Of course not. Average users paying for Twitter is the dumbest idea ever. The whole thing would collapse if it weren't free because no one would use and it would lose all it's value. This whole idea that service need to charge end-users is completely lame. It's very hard to get traciton but very easy to monetize it. But not with a dumb service fee.
I don't think Twitter has said anything more than "We are thinking about simple business products that enhance and encourage what is already happening." That's a quote from @biz that you'll run across if you trace back through all the subsequent spin.
Posted by: Ken Sheppardson
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March 25, 2009 11:09 PM
$50? You must be minted, Marshall. If Twitter started charging that, then I reckon more than 99% of users would disappear overnight, and you would follow them a month later to whatever site took over as market leader.
Twitter would lose all its value to you if they went to a paid model, because 90% of your followers would leave.
Also, $100 for phone service? I think you may have more money than sense... :)
I would definitely pay for Twitter - what other platform gives you real-time access to smart names, big names, friendly names, etc.?
I would say that key to twitter's success is not how they charge users of it. But how can they leverage things that don't interfere with their audience.
They will only be able to charge a small fee per year before the scale of return kills them. When you've got 10 Million users, your revenue is quite limited (esp considering that the service if free and easily repeatable). So, maybe they could get $50 Mil outta a $10 per yr option (with Free trial signup) but anything more and their user group will significantly fall off.
The big money could come from how they license and grow the backend. They could leverage the data and search side of things and go after the Google model. A robust search and research side supported by ad revenue could be an option.
Or here's some big money ideas for free (HA). They can take their technology and create products to leverage that technology. For instance they could develop some type of desktop wifi news feeder or maybe license they could license the feed into the KINDLE. They could create an entire new model that is based couponing and advertising.
Whatever it is, a subscription based model is not the answer to their success.
Twitter started out as a free service and should stay free.
Only if there is a premium service, then a subscription fee is justifiable.
No clue what the premium service could be.
As much as I use Twitter daily on my webtop, I hate to think of having to pay for it! I'm not sure how much I'd be willing to dish out to continue to use the service. I think I'd need to take a look at the costs and go from there!!
Personally, I would not pay anything for a Twitter account. I understand how businesses would want to pay for the service because it could be a benefit in promoting their business (or blog). I don’t think there’s a desperate need for Twitter if it’s not for work.
Compared to Twitter we are just sooo tiny. :-)
But we do believe, that there has to be a way to monetize fairly as users do benefit from services in the net.
So - Twitter needs to create PremiumAccounts (just as we did) - but it needs to think it through first.
What I read about allowing more characters (160, 180), celeb-followers and random followers being added for a PremiumService is just silly and might even backfire (if e.g. follower-numbers are bought those numbers mean nothing anymore...).
Twitter needs to investigate the use and needs of its power-users - and then offer the solution for them. It actually is really simple...
On a general note, I think that 3rd party financed startups with millions and millions of dollar do tend to forget that in a capitalistic society it all runs to making profits (at least some day). And because there are so many of these "lets see if we ever get a business case going"-sites, users have gotten used to the fact, that no matter what the service offers it should be for free - always.
So I am happy, that with the recession Twitter and others are seing the need to find solutions for monetizing their ideas. Hope many will follow.
Don't get me wrong - there should always be a basic and free service and Premium should be just for the PowerUsers - but at the end of the day, even Internet entrepeneurs have to pay bills - and there is no bail out for us, is there?
i totally see your point. but how about making a "donation" system and if you feel like it's worth it, you can pay anything you like, but because it is totally fun and not as crucial as a cell phone for me, i wouldn't pay a dime. if one day i feel like that added significant value then i can... i'm just against making it mandatory! If that happens, I'll prolly stop my account.
When I first joined LiveJournal as a paid member eight years ago, I happily paid $5 a month. I would happily do the same for Twitter -- not for added features or anything special -- but to feel as though I'm supporting something I really like.
There you have it, 37% will pay, the rest of us will use it for free or go elsewhere.
Twitter should appreciate your survey.
I've got to add something. Maybe Twitter should have charged a toll to those who access their API. Seriously. That would keep the service free by allowing Twitter to share in the profittability of those who profit from Twitter's success. Granted, some of Twitter's success has been driven by third-party aps. However, the functionality added by many of those aps is worth paying for.
I'm just say'n it seems like a missed opportunity...looking back.
Twitter for sure is becoming a popular product. I am not a big twitter person, but I do like the things that are shared in twitter. And specifically the web pages that are shared in tweets are very interesting. One of my friends passed this website http://www.boilingpage.com that shows popular web pages among people that twitter. And interestingly, the results are extremely useful. Check it out, I got to this post through boilingpage.com, in fact.
For what Twitter adds to a "normal" persons life, $50 is just too high. Some people get a little bit more value out of it and are using it as either a promotional tool or a networking tool specifically for business/monetary purposes, those people would be willing to spend $50 a month. Normal people are more likely to pay only $25 a year for the service.
I am looking into starting a twitter type service, but just web based to begin with. I am going to be providing the service for free. Please twitter make people pay so that I can take them over (fingers crossed) :)
You'd pay $50/month for the same stream of tweets you have today, but imagine that was the price for everyone. Now there's only 1% of the people/posts on Twitter as there used to be. Is it still worth the same price?
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