mrb's blog

Revenue Idea for Twitter: $1 per Month to Raise the Limit to 280 Characters

By Marc Bevand

28 Dec 2011

Keywords: business finance

The current 140-character limit of Twitter is a main pillar of its success. Brevity makes writing and reading effortless. Their users love it.

Well, most do. Some want the limit to be raised or dropped altogether. But I believe doing so would kill the very essence of the service.

So what if Twitter offered the option to pay a small fee, say $1/month, to double the limit to 280 characters? If only 10% of their users took the offer, that would be about 30 million users bringing $360 million per year, increasing the company's annual revenues by +260% (estimated at $140 million in 2011).

This would solve Twitter's profitability problem for good. It would preserve the sweet shortness of most of the tweets. Those who want to be more eloquent can now be, because anybody can afford $1/month. And we are all happy ever after?

Surely, I must not be the first one to have come up with this idea. It sounds too obvious.

Comments

IDGAF wrote: No thanks. Adding a single character would destroy the Internet as we know it. 29 Dec 2011 05:58 UTC

Lauren wrote: Very interesting. There's no doubt we need to come up with new ways to monetize content and platforms like Twitter so regardless of whether or not this would actually work, I applaud the exercise in thought. 29 Dec 2011 06:49 UTC

Raul wrote: What about retweeting a long tweet if you did not upgrade ? ;) 29 Dec 2011 21:37 UTC

Timmy D wrote: no that's what's wrong with Facebook! keep it breif & to yje point! 29 Dec 2011 21:54 UTC

Peter Pan Wine wrote: The post is confusing - Is this a question of revenue raising or changing the service twitter provides. Not sure I understand the reasons for the post.
If the post is about revenue raising then focus on that - ifs about changing the service then i'm not of the view that twitter needs to do anything at the moment.
The of raising money is one I understand but I not certain the $1 fee will help.
Sure a $1 fee anyone can afford but think of the additional expenses of running this revenue earning idea - costs in having a charging facility, staff to collect and bank record money fee trasaction. The idea could raise $360 million but what about increased outgoings to manage it - think of the cost involved in a revenue earning section- what about the cost of debt collection team to manage this side of the business. And what about the what ifs - what if someone doesnt pay - the cost of an invoice, a late notice, credit holds etc will impact on the business and add to the cost of running the business in general. Also would the $1 fee cause user to vote with their feet - would ht introduction of a fee cause many to walk away from twitter. Im not what the solution is but then again i'm not certain of why the post was indeed posted. 29 Dec 2011 21:59 UTC

mrb wrote: Peter, it is an idea to increase their revenue while changing (a tiny bit) the service they offer. Also I don't understand why an optional $1 fee would cause users to walk away, the fee is *optional*, not mandatory. 31 Dec 2011 09:14 UTC

darul75 wrote: Do not give them this by idea, I was expecting to open twitter2 with a must of 141 caracters for 1$ 17 Oct 2012 16:38 UTC