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Making Money off Microblogging

December 17, 2008

vcmike

A year and a half ago, just before SXSW, Matt Mullenweg told me that Twitter was going to be the hot new thing at the Conference, and urged me to check it out. So I did. I tried it for a couple days. Nobody else I knew or cared about seemed to be using it. So I declared it an example of digiterati navel gazing, and gave it up.

I began tweeting again about a week ago. It is a different story this time around. While I am thoroughly tired of Jason Calacanis’s hourly updates on his life, I am really enjoying keeping tabs on a number of folks ranging from other VCs to smart entrepreneurs/angel investors to some of my portfolio entrepreneurs. And, I sense doing so will help me stay on top of what is going on, and occasionally give me a chance to broadcast messages I want to get out there (I have yet to try it for portfolio recruiting but certainly plan to).

I am convinced that microblogging is here to stay, and that Twitter is on its way to becoming a platform of sorts.

More interesting to me than my personal use of Twitter is the broader question of how investors can make a great return out of the emergence of a microblogging platform. This morning I read that Twitter is hiring a product manager for monetization; and also that Stock Twits just raised an angel round. These juxtaposed headlines raise the perennial question whether the opportunity is best seized by the platform provider or by others who provide applications on top of the platform. I supposed history suggests it is always good to be the platform provider, though in this case I am not so sure that the app guys won’t have more success monetizing.

I’ll be watching, and tweeting, with interest.

4 Comments

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  1. January 8, 2009

    APP on a platform by a country mile. there is already precedent. Pincus and Zynga gaming on facebook, Stocktwits in the angel round, IFund and on and on. its a modified reincarnation of the operating system.

    The one issue i am still leary of is how attention defecit impacts a revenue model. there is So much for us to consume today that alot of these apps dont grab enough of our time to be considered of tangible value.

    Ofcourse there is the whole enterprise side of this discussion too.

  2. July 4, 2009

    Topic of your article is very interesting, i have bookmarked your blog
    regards
    fluflaken

  3. Raymundo Hubertz #
    July 10, 2013

    Several Microblogging platforms help perform business activities with utmost ease. They include tools to assist in attracting business. Tools such as Twitter Adder, BufferApp and HootSuite help build a strong customer relationship and have support for all major browsers and mobile phones. They also help find potential customers according to geographical locations..`,*

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  4. Leopoldo Skillett #
    July 10, 2013

    Microblogging; it may sound small due to the “micro” word; but I tell you; it’s one of the giants on the internet when it comes to traffic, promotion and sales for your blog. You must know which microblogs can give you the best benefit. Without even visiting the web-page, a good Keyword Analyzer will have a module that will tell you whether or not links on the page use “NoFollow” tags. This lets you avoid you from wasting your time on building links from sources where you receive no search engine benefits. It’s otherwise known as Follow or No follow…-::

    My current website
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