Guest Post- Twitter Features I’d Pay For

December 12, 2008 · Comments

written by Samir Balwani

Let’s consider a question that just won’t die, “How will Twitter make money?“. They’ve created a great product that’s been talked about on CNN and is starting to gain mainstream appeal. But with all the success there still exists a huge obstacle, “How do they turn a profit?”.

We’re finally hearing rumors of a place to monetize Twitter. CNET reported that Twitter CEO Evan Williams is considering a paid enterprise model.

There are a lot of possibilities for “commercial” accounts, as Williams put it. Twitter could give corporations access to analytics and data unavailable in free Twitter accounts…

If done correctly this could make Twitter even more important to businesses creating an online presence.

twitter

In light of this, I’ve put together a list of features that I’d be willing to pay for. I invite you to add your suggestions by commenting to this post, and maybe it’ll get included in Twitter’s enterprise version.
Anyway, here’s what I think Twitter needs to create a successful paid membership.

Statistics:

Trending Followers
A graph outlining how many followers I had yesterday and how have today would make reporting a lot easier. It’d help understand what my followers like and what they dislike, and allow to me watch the trend.

Who Unfollowed Me

Right now when someone unfollows me, I don’t even get a notice. Unless I’m being vigilant of how many followers I have daily, I wouldn’t even know that someone didn’t like what I’m saying. I’d love to know who unfollowed me so I could understand the type of people that don’t enjoy what I say.

Page Visitors

How many people visited my Twitter page? Where are they coming from? How many of them are following me? I’d really love to get the answer to these questions. In my mind the easiest way for Twitter to implement this would be to just allow us to embed our Google Analytics code onto our Twitter page and Tweet pages.

analytics

Tracking and Monitoring:

A lot of the stream tracking occurs in 3rd party applications right now. If I’m paying for Twitter, I’d expect Twitter itself to offer me the
features.

Reference Tracking

A separate tab to track keywords I choose. Also, I was disappointed when replies got changed to only tweets that start with @leftthebox. Enterprise users
should be able to track all tweets with their user-name.

reference

Click Tracking

One of the greatest uses of Twitter is promoting links and services. Offering a way to track how many people clicked a link I shared would be useful. Knowing many other Twitter users re-posted the link would be a nice feature too.

Biography and Page Customization:

The current biography space is lacking, to say the least. There’s no place to share information like email, other social media profiles, and blog links. It would be nice to not be forced to put all that information on my background, but instead actually customize my page to look how I want it.

Desktop Client:

Since a lot of these features may be a bit much to put on the clean Twitter layout, a desktop client might be a good idea. However it shouldn’t be limited by the API rules in place now, especially in regards to real-time updates.

Twitter is being heralded as a necessity for many social media campaigns and businesses
are already adopting it. It’s up to Twitter to take advantage of this turn in events. Their main asset is information and by giving companies access to the information they need to make their Twitter campaigns more successful, you create a win win situation for everyone.

Samir Balwani is a Social Media Strategist working with companies to effectively use the Internet. You can get more of his thoughts at Left The Box and by following Samir on Twitter

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  • Mark Wanczak
    I agree that tracking and analytics would be great to have, but many of your other features are already available. For example, you can track who unfollows you using third-party sites and there are a bunch of desktop clients for Twitter with live updates.
  • For unfollows, there are two services I'm aware of: Quitter and Twitterless.

    Quitter is somewhat useful in that it tells you the last tweet you posted before someone unfollowed you. This, however, may not be the reason they unfollowed.

    I've used both services and I've decided they don't really serve my personal needs. I prefer to just let people come and go on Twitter, and not worry too much about the why.

    But perhaps these will be useful to you.
  • These are all good suggestions. I would add another one to an enterprise version. We have 5,000 customers and I have only managed to find around 30 of them on Twitter. Now I don't have time to search for all 5,000 people individually but I would pay to have Twitter run my customer database against theirs and give me a list of our customers who are using Twitter (based on email address) and automatically follow them for me.

    This would be so simple and would really add value to all those companies who are using Twitter primarily for business purposes.
  • I've posted today on how I'd like to figure out a way to keep the DM channel clear of auto generated clutter so the value of this back room discussions can unfold naturally. My sense is that a two tiered system of allowing a follow and then allowing a DM might do the trick...As is, the 20 to 50 "thanks for following me" messages that fill that channel are bothersome and make it cumbersome to track the meaningful exchanges.
  • Great post, Samir. While I second Mark's comment that most of the features you suggested are available as 3rd party options, Twitter still has the upper hand,if they do it right. If an enterprise edition has some/most of those best features integrated without the API calls, it would definitely be worth paying for from a business perspective.
  • BarbaraKB
    One of the others to add is from @scobleizer in a tweet this morning:

    "I would pay for a "pro" version of Twitter or Facebook or FriendFeed. Give me REAL DM features. Worth $10 a month for me." http://twitter.com/Scobleizer/status/1053278897 I have never understood why Twitter wants us to spend time @ gmail.

    This would be *far* more valuable than the above mentioned items which, yes, I can easily get from third party apps.
  • Great post. The team @brightkit (www.brightkit.com) has been working hard on a lot of the features mentioned in this post.

    With BrightKit, you can manage multiple Twitter profiles and add editors, pre-schedule tweets, and measure your success with integrated analytics.

    We're pushing a release today that has a boatload of new features as well. Please drop by and take a look.
  • Thanks for all the comments everyone! In reference to how there are third party applications for some of the features, it really comes down to the fact that I'd happily pay a small fee to NOT have to use 3rd party apps. Why not have Twitter give an entire microblogging suite at a small price?
  • I agree that twitter could add this, but is this the low hanging fruit for them? Twitter has had great innovation through their API, and amazing usage. By competing with popular 3rd party apps they will loose developer support. Why not monetize on API functionality, and targeted advertising into messages?
  • @Ryan Holmes - The problem I have with targeted advertising in messages is that it's intrusive. I see absolutely no future in advertising on social media. [You can read a post I wrote about it "Social Network Advertising is a Waste of Time"].

    Also, if you try to charge developers for API functionality, wouldn't Twitter have just shot itself in the foot? I think most people are developing apps because they're free. You're better of charging for extra functionality on the site for those that want it, instead of charging people for something that they already (a free API).
  • Some great suggestions here, not that I'd like to pay for a premium membership, but having more control and stats over your account, your followers and your tweets would be very valuable for any twitter-user.
  • You can use quitter to be notified when and who unfollows.
  • I agree with Ryan. There is such a need for marketing companies to monitor twitter conversations (plus the need for metrics). An API plus backend metric gathering system would be something worth paying for with clients that rely on consumer conversation.
  • Page customization would be huge... being able to market your corporate brand in a more compelling way would be very useful... agreed also that enhanced stats are also a great idea, I'd also like to be able to customize welcome and thank-you messages to people as the subscribe and unsubscribe. And also, how about providing more widgets for embedding on blogs or your corp webpage... I'd like that.

    @gletham / @gisuser
  • @Samir advertising is only beneficial if it's relevant, contextual, and mildly un-intrusive. I have been really impressed with the results we get from splitweet. The 2.0 crowd seems to be down on advertising, but don't want to pay. Pretty tough dilemma for SN properties. Ultimately we both agree they will need to have a revenue stream, and I think advertising is around to stay.

    Cost per API could be done on a tiered basis set around additional functionality, or volume. This way Twitter will step on less toes than destroying startup API builders audience by incorporating the features.

    Ultimately I think twitter is a great infrastructure, do they want to mess with that?
  • @Ryan Another thing to keep in mind is sometimes companies don't want a third party application tracking the data. Some corporate brands might trust Twitter with the information, but I don't know if I'd trust joe schmo with what I'm tracking, terms I'm targeting, and where I'm getting followers from.

    @Glenn Yeah, page customization would be great. The current background only customization is not nearly robust enough for branding. @ScottMonty does a pretty good job, but I can imagine most companies want more usability.
  • Don't forget the ability for more than one author to post to one account - all designated users could be logged into the same account at the same time and handle customer care issues simultaneously. This would remove the burden from one person (like poor ol' Comcast Frank).
  • @Kari self promotional again, but brightkit.com does that too. You can assign as many editors to an account as you like, and boot them out if you like. ;)
  • CJ
    I suppose, if they could find a way to analyse it, the best thing they could divulge is: not only who is following a particular entry, but WHY!
  • @Kari That's a great idea! Thanks for the insight. I hadn't even though about that. [BTW Anyone who reads this comment and isn't following Kari, you're missing out @KariRippetoe]
  • Wow, only 19 comments so far. This blog sucks, not really, but I want to stay on the conversation, then there are 100 emails in my inbox.

    I just want to say that I would pay for a desktop client and stats. i think that is a perfect idea
  • Good post Samir; I'd definitely pay for additional features if it were "reasonable". I'd like stats on my profile and another sig link and am open for any suggestions Twitter deems beneficial / productive.
  • Thanks Bloggeries! Twitter has definitely become an important part of consumer communications in the digital world. By charging for extra features, you don't alienate the normal user, but you give extra features to those of us that are interested. You could even make the pricing plan tiered, while maintaining a free version that has all the current features.
  • I totally agree with the thought of paying for additional features. One that I'd like to see incorporated is the use of a mybloglog type of widget.

    Another thing I'd be glad to pay for is the ability to imbed a limited amount of key words in a tweet.

    I am using socialtoo.com for daily follow/unfollows but would gladly pay twitter a nominal amount of money for a service like this.
  • In case the Twitter powers-that-be read this, I'd gladly pay for such a suite as well. I'm using several third party platforms for these extra functions. One problem I see in the short term is it seems Twitter needs to focus on tweaking their API to make it work consistently well before developing a suite with similar functionality. They've fixed many of their scalability and downtime issues, now if they can just perfect some of the backend functionality related to these tasks, I think they'll be good to go.
  • I am using http://useqwitter.com to know who 's stopped following me and after which post.
  • I wouldn't want twitter to let you know when I unfollow you, as you suggested. As the unfollower, I want to remain anonymous. Likely the Canadian in me afraid of hurting anyone's feelings :)

    However, if twitter asked me why I am unfollowing in a 3 question or less drop down that was shared with you with my name unattached might give you more specific info that you need without removing my anonymity.

    Your other suggestions would be fantastic as well. Google analytics style reporting for twitter would be a huge help.
  • Maybe I'm the minority here, but the more features that Twitter, Inc. offers, the less of a need for third-party applications and the closer Twitter comes to resemble the walled-in nature of Facebook.
  • Hi Mr. Balwani. I just made a comment and I think I accidentally erased it. I just wanted to know if you had heard of Twellow? Check it out. Perhaps you or Chris could tell us what you think of it?

    krissy knox :)
  • @samir (and everyone one else commenting) ... thanks for sharing your ideas! although there are some 3rd party tools that do some of these things i'd agree that to have Twitter support all this in one unified platform would be GREAT! I'd happily pay a small fee.

    One issue i see with the 'pay for features' ... I don't think i'd be as willing to pay for features if i was not as 'hooked' on Twitter as i am now.

    What do you think? Would the 'pay for features' model really take off with those that were not already advocates of Twitter?

    --
    http://twitter.com/franswaa
  • stevenimmons
    Perhaps Twitter's problem has been speed to offer services. I love the 'side-show' innovation, but I do agree with some of the frustration of over fragmentation of the 'experience'. I prefer single platform (in the main), decent page and bio customisation would be a start, but I don't think I'd want to pay for it. Twitter is only really useful with other tools and other people's IPR. I'm somewhat amazed it remains so 'vanilla'...
  • It'd be interesting to see how Twitter makes the move into developing a financial business model after offering something free for so long.

    I can see how and why approaching the corporate market could help bring revenues to Twitter first b/c I'd think the individuals who are using Twitter would offer much resistance to paying for something they're so used to getting for free.

    It'd be interesting to see how Twitter makes that transition.
  • I think Twitter is still in the "brick and mortar" phase, and that the third-party developers had a leap. It's difficult for Twitter to control them, and almost all of the features in this post are already in one or many third-party applications. Putting those in the mainstream Twitter will bring those third-party developers down.

    I guess Twitter will more likely license an API and sell it to any interested third party, so they can built whatever features they want, rather than integrate something more into the core.

    This is what I would do if found myself in their shoes...
  • Interesting point, Ari!

    My company is developing yet another way to use Twitter, a web-based app called Twitterface. For free, users will be able to customize the page for their branding (no logo of ours cluttering the look), manage multiple accounts, search or view another user's profile on the same page while using a Twitter account, and will be able to have real links to whatever sites they want to in a footer on the page (so excited about that feature, so we can lose the static-links-on-backgrounds model!!) The product will launch as a public beta in January 2009, and if you want to keep track of updates you can follow us @tweetmeup or visit our blog at http://twitterface.me

    As for the analytics/stats.... I am hoping we can work with some other Twitter developers, such as @tweetstory, @tweetstats, tr.im and more, to bring some level of analysis or tracking into one app so people don't have to hop around as much. That might help some of these listed issues, but there is still a long way to go, toward having the kind of in-depth tracking and traffic analysis that you get with web stats or Google analytics... definitely an opportunity out there, either for Twitterface to address someday, or someone else who will fill this gap! Lots and lots of users are clamoring for data, as Twitter seems to be fascinating to its most avid members.
  • Agree, there is huge potential with Twitter Analytics that can be very helpful to a business. Most new followers I receive are businesses. They def would pay for the right analytics program to ehlp determine how their users act.
  • I'm not sure about some of the suggestions. I can see where you're coming from, but as has been mentioned, they are already available via third-party. I know you mention that you'd be happy to pay a fee to avoid third-party tools, but this could actually result in a negative effect.

    Think of most of the great innovations in tech-led fields and they come from third-party applications. By not being "hemmed in" by one company's view as to how their application should look, it opens up a whole field of creativity. To take that away and then have to pay for inferior models seems to go against the grain of social media trying to offer new views on existing models.
  • I'm not a heavy Twitter user, but when I unfollow someone it's usually because their posts aren't useful to me -- not because I don't like what they say. Twitter's utility is limited if the stream is cluttered with material that's actively irrelevant.
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