Twitter's Biz Stone has gone public talking about how he expects Twitter will start making money. He talks about putting in value added services that Twitter can charge for. Trouble is they still have to do the business plan. As he told CNBC, Twitter won't be making money out advertising but working out how to charge for business services. "Hundreds of companies are already using Twitter to track consumer sentiment. The company would mine and translate those analytics for companies, for a fee."
As I wrote in my column, social networking sites will struggle to make a profit which raises the question whether they will still be there in five years time. Daniel Lyons in Newsweek says the only way sites like Twitter and Facebook can make a buck is by charging users.
The Economist agrees and reiterates the obvious: if they are to survive, these sites will have to change their business model. The sites havge to get over one big problem: charging money for the first time is, well, not that social.
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