Twitter’s Unrealised Potential Times Two
A few days ago a tweet of @Darcie‘s alerted me to @kchtk_e’s new website which is built on Twitter. At first I thought it was a brilliant use of the new Twitter, with its inline media. The concept is a clever one:
- Each section is a twitter user
- The navigation is a tweet which simply links to the other sections (users)
- Content is added as tweets
To tailor a fit between an existing mechanism or service and your requirements is indeed talented. It shows attention to industry development and imagination beyond it.
The downside of building a website on Twitter
After realising how brilliant it was I spotted the achilles heel:
- What happens if twitter look at @kchtk_e (the mainpage account) as being a dead account after a few months?
- What happens if @kchtk_e tweet again – the newest posts are at the top – no more menu?
- The format of @kchtk_e is very strict, not intuitive to non-twitter users.
- @kchtk_e may have problems expanding the twitter brand if twitter kchtk names get taken.
Each of these points is valid, but they highlight an opportunity, don’t they? Couldn’t Twitter charge a small fee for:
- keeping inactive accounts open.
- sticky tweets.
- custom CSS.
Quantity Can Be Quality
Greater Manchester Police have been tweeting their every deed for 24 hours. Many people didn’t realise just how much the police did until @gmpolice ran out of API calls and had to start tweeting from gmp24_1, gmp24_2, gmp24_3 & gmp24_4.
There’s an opportunity here too there, isn’t there? Were Twitter to offer accounts for such endeavours, at a small cost (or free for non-profits)… Twitter now has the ubiquity to be able to charge for premium features without losing penetration.
Monetise Restrictions / Maximise Negatives
So here are 2 freemium options that could be used to make some money for Twitter. Evidently they are not planned into Twitter’s structure, but sometimes looking beyond the negative can reveal obvious strategies that encompass the negative.
