Thanks to TechCrunch for commanding your readers to skew the results because that is really awesome…
As for my vote, yes I would pay to use Twitter. I’m not really sure what that price would be, however, the service has been of great value to me personally and professionally. Yes, I understand that the value of Twitter is really access to a community and that such a plan could drive that community to another platform, but what needs to be considered is how much you have already spent on Twitter.
As you probably know from reading our blog and a number of other blogs, applications and businesses have been built completely around Twitter. There is a large investment here and one that may not be easily transferred over to the next platform. Those who have made this investment will have some stake in moving and I am sure would gladly pay more to stay. There are also many who have purchased these applications or services. I alone have spent some pocket change to purchase iPhone apps such as Tweetsville and Summizer. If I am willing to purchase an application to use Twitter why wouldn’t I pay for it?
If Twitter would roll out a pay for use model I would seriously consider it. I love its simplicity, its flexibility and the community that uses it. I am not sure what the magic dollar amount is (unless Twitter is hiring a business director and in that case give me a call), however I do know Twitter is worth something.
If you haven’t done it yet check out Guy’s poll and cast your vote. If you are sitting on the fence or would rather see it go than pay, what is Twitter missing and what does it need to implement before rolling out the pay for use model?
Rob is one of the founders of Microblink. His interests include how people are using microblogs and the community growing around them.
Mike writes and edits for Microblink day-in and day-out. He is known as the marketing guy and handles most of the microblogging accounts.
Mark writes development-oriented posts as well as news items. He's not afraid to dive headfirst into technical topics for the sake of the team.
Thanks for the coverage. Didn’t know about your site until today. I added it to http://blogging.alltop.com/ and http://twitter.alltop.com/.
All the best to you,
Guy
Yes I would pay for the service. However I do believe that MOST would not. Also what would be left would be a bunch of hardcore tech lovers. (Kinda like it is now) If left free eventually it will hit critical mass. Everyone loves text messaging.
It’s like monetize now and get a bit or let it become part of everyone’s daily life and figure out how to monetize it then. I think most would rather see ads then pay. Most people don’t want to pay for anything; ever.
I don’t mind paying for Twitter either. I love Twitter and I don’t mind paying them between $5-8 per month for a service I really enjoy. I do think, though, that if they ever tried to create paid accounts there would be a huge backlash within the community. They may be better off finding other ways of monetization.
Rob,
I’m in the same boat and would gladly pay five dollars a month if it meant no service interruption. That being said, I actually would suggest an alternative first that copies the Apple model. Check it out here if you have a chance. http://twurl.nl/5lasha
Essentially it gives those who are interested in premium upgrades a chance to spend more and subsequently fund the rest of the “basic” users.
Hey guys. Nice blog! I ran a straw poll (linked via my name) on this back in April - 49% said they’d pay £12/$24 a year for an ad-free reliable Twitter. Im guessing from Guy’s stats that figure is still about right, maybe even a bit low! I just wish Twitter would come out and ask the community. I think the response would be good, if done in the right way.
But would your audience be willing to pay?
I would not pay for it, but I certainly wouldn’t want to see it go away. I’d still monitor it, and see what all the people who DO pay are saying…
Why add the assumption “I’d rather see it go away” to a numeric answer? Geez, survey design is tricky…
Well - maybe it’s just me - but if all these folks have an investment in Twitter because they built apps around it and web sites and innovations, perhaps they are the ones that should be paying for the service? If the community moved to another platform, I’d be disheartened because of the work building a following and community, but I’d start over where the community moved, because if only those hoping to build business on Twitter stay, they’ll be selling to one another. The people are the key.
What I COULD see working would be a tiered system. Remove NOTHING that you can currently do on Twitter, but add some services or features that only paid accounts could take advantage of. If you lessen what’s already there for regular users, you’ll lose them, but if you find some new cool toys that you can only get if you pay - I’d do that. I did it at places like Live Journal - paid accounts had more toys. Toys sell.
David
@Guy Thanks for getting us added to Alltop. It’s really a great honor.
@Bloggeries It seems to me they are looking for a silver bullet business plan, which may still take awhile. I agree with just throwing on some ads and letting those dollars grow.
@Jennifer Twitter has become such a big part of how I work online, it would be tough to work without it. I wouldn’t mind paying $5/month either, because it has value for me. Maybe they should try the Twitterific or Pownce model and do ads, but pay to remove them (if users want).
@Len Perfect. You’re thinking exactly what I was thinking. Don’t make people pay, but if they want to, give them some additional features they can use.
@Jonathan Isn’t it strange that even though Twitter and microblogging have made companies so much more accessible, it’s third parties and individuals running these surveys instead of Twitter themselves?
@Candace I’m not clear on your question. Are you asking about the audience of our blog (Microblink)? Or the audience of followers a user has on Twitter?
Only the hard core Twitter users would pay. If they implemented a pay model, Twitter would become the worlds largest echo chamber.
I hope they don’t start charging but if they did I suppose $5. a month would not be a big deal.
I originally voted for it to go away since I know there are other platforms that offer great services, but I didn’t really consider how embedded it is into hundreds of other services. There are likely thousands of services built upon Twitter, so it’s not really a viable alternative to have it go away anymore. They’ve passed the point where they can allow users to pay or leave, they have to have a middle ground (perhaps ad-based).
Trying to put a monetary value on it proves to be much more difficult. I don’t mind having ads thrown my way, so I would gladly take that road instead of paying. Rob’s arguments made me consider a monetary donation more seriously, however.
From a strictly social aspect, I can’t justify paying for Twitter. The casual user will simply find other vehicles to “get thieir tweet on.”
On the other hand, if there was a business model that Twitter (and others) could monetize, I’d be in support of that.
Great post - Great buzz, guys!
Keep Cooking!
Andrew B. Clark
The Brand Chef
@David I like your tiered approach. The biggest thing about changing the way the basic user interacts with Twitter is that it goes against what they signed up for and why they decided to use the service. If they said, “Ok, you know this service that used to be free? Well now we’re making you pay for,” people would uproar over it.
However, if they said, “We’re introducing ads to Twitter to help cover costs and for those of you who don’t want to see those ads, there is a paid model available, which also includes additional features you may find useful, like X, Y and Z.”
Even for businesses, I don’t like the fact that they’ve singled them out as targets for paying. It’s been hard enough to get those businesses microblogging and seeing the value here, but if they start slapping every company that joins and tell them they have to pay to talk with their customers, those businesses will laugh them off.
@Guy - thank you for the add and links.
The comments have been great. I have kicked around several other business models in my head. Truth is there are a lot of people making money from Twitter and I completely agree that Twitter should try to capture some of that before charging the rest of the community. Enhanced business services and analytics or maybe a premium feed or version of the api? I also like
However here is another way of thinking about this… How many of you have ever payed a cover charge to get into a bar? There are hundreds of other bars that we could have gone to and even some that may offer better drink specials but yet we still pay the cover.
I would pay. I pay for sms and i find twitter much more valuable than that.
I would be prepared to pay, but not as much as $5/month. The “freemium” model might work, but even then I doubt anyone is going to pay that much for premium features.
The comparison to SMS is interesting. Unlike @PaulNovell I find Twitter less valuable than SMS. Almost everyone I know can be contacted via SMS, even if they are not on the same phone network as me. Right now, comparatively few people I know belong to any microblogging network. Makes me wonder what the value might be if all the various microblogging services decided to connect and interoperate.
I have a disability, and Twitter is one of my “lifelines” to the outside world. If a good friend didn’t let me tap into his DSL via wireless, I wouldn’t be online at all. It’s hard enough for me to scrape together laundry money, let alone pay for online access. I’m more than willing to put up with ads for the sake of keeping Twitter a free service.
I would pay for twitter as a service. it would seem if you were gonna charge if you did a small amount it would be huge based on how many people use twitter. Would everyone be up for paying…probably not.
maybe you could do a premium service were you have some extra features or something that away the base service would be free but you would pay for extras.
I would argue the numbers are not skewed. Early voters are probably heavy users, more likely to use it in business and therefore willing to pay.
Late voters probably use Twitter less, are less likely to have it tied to revenue, and therefore less likely to be willing to pay.
I would also argue that the longer this poll went on, the more “skewed” it would get.
Clearly, there’s a market for people willing to pay for Twitter. The question is how many of them would sign up for a premium service that offered no service outages and a few more bells and whistles?
Mark
Hi Rob and others and (Guy if you’re listening),
I think Guy Kawasaki framed the question wrong. Maybe he should have asked:
“Whats the MOST you would pay per month for Twitter” instead of basically asking “Would you rather have Twitter disappear or pay $60 per year.
$60 per year ($5 per month) is the lowest choice and way too much to charge(IMHO).
I think Guy should do the survey again and let the surveyed select a number between $0 and $10 in 50 cent increments (i.e. .50,1.00, 1.50 etc. per month)
I’d bet the real answer lies somewhere between $12 and $24 per YEAR.
@Richard The $12-24 range seems to be pretty reasonable (both pro Flickr and Pownce accounts top out at $25/year). And as most here are saying, it only makes sense to offer it as an option, not to try to charge everyone.
However, as Mark Evans notes, the premium service would indeed need to have those additional features and little-to-no downtime. Maybe even something like Google Apps latest release for businesses where they actually have SLAs in place?
Being fairly new to Twitter I would probably pay a small yearly service if Twitter improved some of heir apps. Hate deleted DM(s) one by one. Think there should be a way to group tweet. Send same Tweet to chosen Followers on your list. Oh and remove the MagPie element being used on Twitter now.
I suppose I am concerned that those who will pay will be the Marketers and Techies. Usually Marketers communicate with each other not subscribe to each other’s services. So where would their target audience be.
Some people may economically not be able to pay for Twitter Service…There are 100’s of other Soal Media apps out there in the stratospher.
I still don´t know how you could profit from using twitter. I´m from last century, where people would care more about there lives and wouldn’t be posting every detail. I’m not a journalist or bloguist either. So, as audience it’s nothing more than RSS on the web. While sitting on the fence, I couldn’t come up with a good reason to pay to use Twitter
@Rafael You may not profit in a monetary sense from using Twitter, but for me just having instant access to all of these individuals and the resources/thoughts they share is profit enough.
If you’re trying to make a financial calculation on the ROI of paying for Twitter, I’m not sure you’ll find it. The real value comes from the connections you can make with other influencers and thought-leaders in your field.