I’m not sure what Dave Winer is smoking these days or what is in his drinking water but fresh off of his pimping a revolutionary; not to mention freaking expensive, photo RSS feeder for Mac only screen savers he is now providing words of wisdom about how Twitter could make money.

Dave first mentions the fact that while Twitter doesn’t appear to have any business model the developers of Twitter clients are making money by selling their programs. Well as a Twitter client developer who tries to keep an eye on what others are doing the only client; out of a growing number of clients, that is charging for their product is Twitterific - a Mac only client.

He goes on to suggest that Twitter could create it’s own client and charge for it - or better yet come out with a cell phone that could make phone calls, play MP3 and do SMS but had Twitter baked in. Baked in? … The only thing baked with this idea is Dave.

Dave recovers from that deluded idea quickly though by suggesting that okay that might not work but how about an existing service that maybe we would move to in droves because they had Twitter baked in and then charged you extra for it.

Yes that makes so much sense doesn’t it - Not! The problem is that Twitter is a victim of its own success. It hit a popularity upswing before any business model could be baked into the system so now they are having to retrofit what we all use and expect to be free. Now Robert Scoble might be willing to pay for the service:

Scobleizer said at 1/2/2008 1:04:14 PM
Good morning. Glad to see that Twitter has a business model. I’d pay for it to deliver all of my messages!

but I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that a very large percentage of their userbase would vaporize overnight if any part of their existing feature set became available for a fee - subscription or otherwise. The only way I can see Twitter being able to monetize themselves is either through charging for future services or advertising on the Twitter site that a lot of folks use instead of clients. As a last resort they could go the Pownce route and slip ads into the message streams.

The piper might be coming to Twitter as the VC money will run out and bills will have to be paid, employees will need to be paid and the VCs will want their ROI however I somehow doubt that Twitter will be coming to Dave for business advice give today’s post.

[Graphic: babydevine.com]

Listening to: Enigma - The Cross Of Changes - The Eyes Of Truth

Conversation Tags: Twitter