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TwitBin: Making money off Twitter and returning nothing!
Let me start out by saying I think that the TwitBin Firefox Add-on is nice and useful. Makes those who feel like they need to let us know that they just went to the loo a bit easier. I got the news about this (like others here and here) yesterday but didn't think it was worthy of a post - guess I was wrong!
But alas, here is why I struggle with apps like this. The TwitBin team spent $1k and 2 weeks building this app which pulls and pushes data from Twitter. But it includes an advertisement. Does any of this money get returned to Twitter? I doubt it. I think that TwitBin needs to return a percentage of the income to Twitter. As a sort of licensing fee.
Second, as I noted before, building an app that relies solely on a market untested product seems silly. On the other hand, it gets this firm, InfiniMedia some great publicity for their agency. So while normally I am against this build on top of another untested product, this time it might actually prove valuable.
Of course once Twitter builds their own (would take 2 weeks and $1k right?) then TwitBin will perhaps go into another bin :-P
Tweetbar for Firefox does the same thing as this does and it's ad-free and has worked well since the introduction.
Yes we will see if people complain about the ads or not. There are plenty of other clients that don't have ads. There are (7+ other twitter clients for firefox!)
http://www.twittown.com
Think about all the businesses that have been built around myspace - are they paying myspace?? As long as it's symbiotic and it actually drives traffic for twitter - why not?! Twitter could offer the same thing themselves, too and place ads. They might have to try and make money one day...
Yeah, and it's not so smart to rely on MySpace or any other commercial venture without a contract of some sort. Google for "photobucket +myspace" and see why.
I think Twitter probably needs API keys and seperate into "commercial" and "un-commercial" just like Flickr.
Hey Allen,
First off, thanks for covering us. I am glad you voiced your opinion, also glad you got our name right :-)
If twitter wants a piece of the revenue, they will contact us. I don't think they've asked twitterific for money yet.
Anyway, regarding the ads, so far we've received a lot of positive feedback on them. They are pretty small, don't blink, and we are pretty selective who we run there (right now, its all our friends' companies). Right now its more about building the ecosystem around twitter than anything else IMO, and growing the user base. Twitter will make way more money with smaller companies like mine helping them grow their userbase, than we could ever provide them as far as revenue sharing.
Thanks for commenting Brian. I really have nothing against your app, as I noted it's nice and has some very favorable feedback so far.
And there is no reason why you (and everyone else) shouldn't monetize their app. In fact, as a business person first, I think it's critical.
So how do we get a CN ad in there? :) we are friends right?
Allen,
Shoot me an email, how about we make a trade? This is about transparency, so you advertise our product (weren't you giving away free ad spots to startups) & we'll send you a video for your video pitch thing, and we'll hook it up with some free ads in twitbin.
you've got my email. lets make it work.