This is how Twitter can make more money

The Internet service that was founded in 2006 is still experiencing problems when it comes to making money. Recently, Twitter presented its quarterly results, and once again, the company was losing money. This time, it was a loss of 137 million USD. 

“In this article, I will explain how Twitter can increase its turnover by playing into the market of web care.”

I think there is a lot of potential to make money with the platform, and to do this outside of revenues from advertisements. Twitter says that it has 316 million active users, worldwide. One of the strengths of Twitter is that users can communicate through direct messaging or through public messages. Companies are already using this by offering support, or as they call it: ‘web care’. This phenomenon is not new in itself. In March 2008, Comcast started to offer customer service through Twitter. Currently, there are tens of thousands of organisations that have embraced web care, without it being a paid product of Twitter itself. This is something Twitter can make money with!

OFFER A SUBSCRIPTION FOR WEB CARE

At the moment, Twitter offers the infrastructure for support and for branding, but it does not ask money for it. At least, not directly. It is a valuable addition for organisations and users. Besides that, it also saves costs for organisation, and it improves the user experience, since it often works faster and better for users.

Third parties already offer many web care tools, but Twitter hardly makes any money on that. Even though these are great tools for the Social Media CRM and support of multinationals, they are – from a financial perspective – not really attractive for smaller organisations.

Twitter should create different web care packages. This will enable organisations to have more possibilities to offer support than a regular account. The generated turnover can be based on a monthly subscription per support account, or even per support agent.

TWITTER AS WEBSITE CHAT SUPPORT

Live chat on website is another form of income. An increasing number of websites offer live chat possibilities, which allow you to communicate with an employee directly. At the moment, there are so many chat providers, that the user must always enter his or her data again, to be able to chat.

This is an opportunity for Twitter. They could offer a service for live support via a chat box on the website. This is convenient for users, since they do not have to enter their data again. Their user name, picture, and even chat history with this organisation can be derived from the log. This makes it all a lot more personal. The user can choose to keep the conversation public via tweets, or private via direct messaging. And if a client is helped, the experience can be shared immediately by tweeting it.

These are just two ways in which Twitter can push back its losses, without being a burden to users by having even more advertisements on the platform.

First published on Rahmani.nl