Twitter, the company that early on never wanted to talk about money, now has a money-making strategy that it says is working well.
On Tuesday, Dick Costolo, Twitter’s chief operating officer, introduced some new ways Twitter will make money. Advertisers will soon be able to pay for Twitter to suggest that people follow their accounts, and next year, Twitter advertising will expand to small businesses, which will be able to place ads using a self-serve system.
But another money-making idea for Twitter — the @earlybird e-commerce account that offered daily deals — will be discontinued, at least for now, because it did not work well apart from a few popular sales, he said.
“We’re definitely beyond the experimentation stage,” said Mr. Costolo, speaking in New York at the Mixx conference of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. “We feel like we’ve cracked the code on a new kind of advertising — advertising that starts out as organic content.”
He was referring to Promoted Tweets and Trends, the ads that companies like Starbucks and Virgin America buy on Twitter and that show up as the top Twitter post when people search for related words, or on the list of trending topics.
Advertisers pay anytime someone interacts with the Twitter post, by clicking on a link, forwarding the post to friends or replying to it. People click on these ads 5 percent of the time, Mr. Costolo said.
Companies will now also be able to buy ads to promote their accounts. Twitter suggests accounts that people should follow, based on their interests, and will use the same algorithm to suggest accounts that advertisers pay to promote.
That way, businesses have the chance to get their posts in front of followers through their free accounts every time they post, not just through ads, and people are choosing to see the posts.
Asked if companies will ever spend millions of dollars on Twitter, as they do on Google, Mr. Costolo said, “That day is right around the corner.” So far, about 40 companies have advertised and 80 percent have advertised more than once, he said. He expects that to be in the hundreds by the end of the year.
“Right now, there’s a line out the door to advertise with us and spend significant dollars with us,” Mr. Costolo said.
Twitter will develop a self-serve advertising system next year that will be easy for small businesses to use themselves, Mr. Costolo said. Companies like Google and Yelp offer a similar service. Twitter has been particularly valuable for small businesses, though it has been so valuable as a free service that it might be hard to convince them they should also pay for ads.
“There’s a portion of small businesses that will use Twitter and are happy with organic followers and will build organically, and that’s fine with us,” he said.
Finally, Mr. Costolo gave some new growth numbers — Twitter has more than 160 million users and is adding 370,000 a day — and said the company was working on ways to help users discover real-time events that are being discussed on Twitter, like conversations around an earthquake or sporting event.
For the past few years - and it’s especially true this year - there has been tremendous growth in the number of seed stage investments and the number of angels (people investing their own money) and VCs (people investing their own money *and* other people’s money)
We have been making seed investments since the earliest days at Spark. We take these seed investments very seriously, and we go through the same decision making whether it's a $250k investment or a $2MM investment.
An easy way to describe the decision process is we ask if we believe the founders, their vision and ability to execute have the opportunity to create something ultimately quite big
Even if it starts out quite small (as they mostly do). Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
If we believe the company is best served by a quick flip or small exit then we encourage the founders to raise money from investors that are comfortable with that strategy or help them feel out if bootstrapping is a better model.
I do not believe that raising a small amount of capital initially means that you can’t build a huge company. I disagree with people that tell me that there is no way you can build a big company from a mere $250k. You can actually do it with less.
In my mind the opportunity has little to do with the size of the first round of capital.
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Twitter, the company that early on never wanted to talk about money, now has a money-making strategy that it says is working well.
On Tuesday, Dick Costolo, Twitter’s chief operating officer, introduced some new ways Twitter will make money. Advertisers will soon be able to pay for Twitter to suggest that people follow their accounts, and next year, Twitter advertising will expand to small businesses, which will be able to place ads using a self-serve system.
But another money-making idea for Twitter — the @earlybird e-commerce account that offered daily deals — will be discontinued, at least for now, because it did not work well apart from a few popular sales, he said.
“We’re definitely beyond the experimentation stage,” said Mr. Costolo, speaking in New York at the Mixx conference of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. “We feel like we’ve cracked the code on a new kind of advertising — advertising that starts out as organic content.”
He was referring to Promoted Tweets and Trends, the ads that companies like Starbucks and Virgin America buy on Twitter and that show up as the top Twitter post when people search for related words, or on the list of trending topics.
Advertisers pay anytime someone interacts with the Twitter post, by clicking on a link, forwarding the post to friends or replying to it. People click on these ads 5 percent of the time, Mr. Costolo said.
Companies will now also be able to buy ads to promote their accounts. Twitter suggests accounts that people should follow, based on their interests, and will use the same algorithm to suggest accounts that advertisers pay to promote.
That way, businesses have the chance to get their posts in front of followers through their free accounts every time they post, not just through ads, and people are choosing to see the posts.
Asked if companies will ever spend millions of dollars on Twitter, as they do on Google, Mr. Costolo said, “That day is right around the corner.” So far, about 40 companies have advertised and 80 percent have advertised more than once, he said. He expects that to be in the hundreds by the end of the year.
“Right now, there’s a line out the door to advertise with us and spend significant dollars with us,” Mr. Costolo said.
Twitter will develop a self-serve advertising system next year that will be easy for small businesses to use themselves, Mr. Costolo said. Companies like Google and Yelp offer a similar service. Twitter has been particularly valuable for small businesses, though it has been so valuable as a free service that it might be hard to convince them they should also pay for ads.
“There’s a portion of small businesses that will use Twitter and are happy with organic followers and will build organically, and that’s fine with us,” he said.
Finally, Mr. Costolo gave some new growth numbers — Twitter has more than 160 million users and is adding 370,000 a day — and said the company was working on ways to help users discover real-time events that are being discussed on Twitter, like conversations around an earthquake or sporting event.
For the past few years - and it’s especially true this year - there has been tremendous growth in the number of seed stage investments and the number of angels (people investing their own money) and VCs (people investing their own money *and* other people’s money)
We have been making seed investments since the earliest days at Spark. We take these seed investments very seriously, and we go through the same decision making whether it's a $250k investment or a $2MM investment.
An easy way to describe the decision process is we ask if we believe the founders, their vision and ability to execute have the opportunity to create something ultimately quite big
Even if it starts out quite small (as they mostly do). Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
If we believe the company is best served by a quick flip or small exit then we encourage the founders to raise money from investors that are comfortable with that strategy or help them feel out if bootstrapping is a better model.
I do not believe that raising a small amount of capital initially means that you can’t build a huge company. I disagree with people that tell me that there is no way you can build a big company from a mere $250k. You can actually do it with less.
In my mind the opportunity has little to do with the size of the first round of capital.
Blizzard dates Cataclysm launch as December 7 | <b>News</b>
Blizzard Entertainment has finally lifted the lid on plans for the launch of World of Warcraft's latest expansion - Catac...
IMPORTANT: Bing <b>News</b> RSS feed has moved! (France National Soccer <b>...</b>
... FIFA World Cup™ problems which followed the sending home of Nicolas Anelka after his clash with Blanc's predecessor Raymond Domenech. Blanc banned the entire 23-man FIFA World Cup squad from his first More FIFA World Cup News ...
Our Editor Tours The National Museum in Manila ~ The Crown Jewel <b>...</b>
Our art news magazine is updated DAILY with new articles, and is published FREE to subscribers worldwide. We are sponsored by the Art Appreciation Foundation. AKN brings to its readers unbiased art information and news about art, ...
eric seiger eric seiger
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