Subscribe free to our newsletters via your
. 24/7 Space News .




INTERNET SPACE
Twitter looking to make money from commerce
by Staff Writers
Aspen, Colorado (AFP) July 19, 2011


Twitter could potentially generate revenue from commerce in addition to advertising, its current money-maker, the chief executive of the company said Tuesday.

Dick Costolo, speaking at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in this Colorado ski resort, also dismissed reports of management turmoil at the San Francisco-based company and said it is still seeing explosive growth.

"Along any axis you measure us we're growing faster than we've ever grown before," Costolo said.

Twitter users are sending one billion tweets every five days and the service now has more than 200 million registered users, he said.

Costolo declined to reveal whether Twitter, which was founded in 2006, is profitable, but he said the number of advertisers on the platform is up 600 percent this year over last year, when it numbered in the hundreds.

"The beauty of the Twitter advertising platform is the ads are just tweets," he said. "The ad system is organic to the platform."

Costolo said Twitter gives advertisers the ability "to edit and manage a campaign in real time and distribute it globally."

"We've already seen that from (movie) studios," he said. "The week before a film comes out they're promoting trailers on Twitter."

Twitter users are engaging with advertisements on the service much more than they do with Internet search, he said.

"Our engagement rates are through the roof, ads with clickthrough rates of 30, 40, 50 percent," he said, adding that 80 percent of advertisers have been renewing their campaigns.

Advertising will be "one of the major revenue components for Twitter going forward," the Twitter CEO said, but "there is a commerce opportunity there for us to take advantage of."

"We already see a tremendous amount of commerce taking part on the platform," he said. "We are thinking about the kinds of things that we will offer to the market and designing different things and experimenting with different things."

Costolo cited the case of a professional American football team which used Twitter to advertise to fans that it had 1,000 tickets left for the next day's game and sold them within an hour.

"How can we remove friction from the process?" he asked. "Now you have to go to a third site, enter a promotion code... Classic economics -- good money to be made when you remove friction from transactions."

Costolo said the recent departures from Twitter of two of its co-founders, Ev Williams and Biz Stone, did not mean there were management problems at the firm.

"While people like to focus on the comings and goings of the founders... what's been really going on inside the company is we've been building out the senior management of the company," he said.

Costolo, who replaced Williams as chief executive in October, said the process was mostly complete but Twitter planned to hire a senior marketing executive soon.

"It's one of the most powerful brands in he world already in its short life -- the bird is recognized around the world -- but we don't really have anybody internally curating that brand," he said.

Costolo was also asked about a US Federal Trade Commission probe into Twitter's dealings with third-party firms that build applications for the service.

Twitter was cooperating with the US regulators and will "provide them with all the information they want," he said.

Twitter has recently begun designing its own tools for using the service, triggering some concern among developers whose products may be seen as rivals.

Costolo said Twitter intends to provide a "Twitter-owned and operated experience on all major platforms" but there will be a place for outside companies that can provide "value-added services for our core products."

.


Related Links
Satellite-based Internet technologies






Comment on this article via your Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail login.

Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle








INTERNET SPACE
Indonesia urges ASEAN to harness Twitter, Facebook
Nusa Dua, Indonesia (AFP) July 19, 2011
ASEAN must maximise the use of Twitter, Facebook and other social media to engage the region's citizens, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Tuesday. Speaking to Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers on the island of Bali, Yudhoyono expressed support for the establishment of an ASEAN blogger community. "For the first time, and in contrast to just ... read more


INTERNET SPACE
Two NASA Probes Tackle New Mission: Studying The Moon

Twin Artemis Probes To Study Moon In 3D

Marshall Center's Bassler Leads NASA Robotic Lander Work

NASA puts space probe into lunar orbit

INTERNET SPACE
Opportunity Tops 20 Miles of Mars Driving

Opportunity Under One Mile from Crater Rim

NASA in Australia for Mars research

Mars Opportunity Rover Nears Endeavour Crater Rim

INTERNET SPACE
NASA Begins Commercial Partnership With ULA

"Space taxi" coming

AIA Concerned by NASA, NOAA Cuts

Appropriations Committee Approves the Fiscal Year 2012 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations Bill

INTERNET SPACE
China launches new data relay satellite

Time Enough for Tiangong

China launches experimental satellite

China to launch an experimental satellite in coming days

INTERNET SPACE
Atlantis crew leaves historic flag aboard ISS

Obama dials for pizza, gets space station

NASA Selects Nonprofit to Manage Space Station National Lab Research

Astronauts Complete Spacewalk; Cargo Transfers Begin

INTERNET SPACE
Russia sends observation satellite into space

NASA inks agreement with maker of Atlas V rocket

Russia launches 2 foreign satellites into orbit

ILS Proton Successfully Launches the SES-3 Satellite for SES

INTERNET SPACE
Ten new distant planets detected

Microlensing Finds a Rocky Planet

A golden age of exoplanet discovery

CoRoT's new detections highlight diversity of exoplanets

INTERNET SPACE
'Bloom is off the rose' for 3D: DreamWorks CEO

Apple profit rockets with hot iPad, iPhone sales

Chilean copper-molybdenum mine moves ahead

Earnings-outlook spry at 100-year-old IBM




The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2014 - Space Media Network. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement