With Twitter sitting on another $35-million of venture capital, the question now is what does the company do with all its dough? It’s a fascinating topic given Twitter only has 20 employees so it’s cash burn has to be less than $5-million/year.
If Biz Stone and Evan Williams are looking for ideas on how to spend some money, here are five ideas.
1. Acquire TweetDeck, one of the leading third-party software clients. With a multi-panel, user-friendly interface, TweetDeck has resonated with power Twitter users. TweetDeck would provide Twitter with two key revenue opportunities: the sale of a premium version, and a platform to add new features such as e-commerce and advertising.
2. Buy Thwirl, which would give Twitter another popular desktop client, as well as a window into the world of video with Seesmic. And while Twitter’s at it, maybe it could acquire or develop an analytics service to offer companies and advertisers a fee-based service to see what Twitter users are doing and saying.
3. Create (or buy) a kick-ass Twitter applications directory that would be structured along the lines of what WordPress offers. There’s a huge appetite for a place where Twitter users can enhance and expand their use of the platform. Maybe Twitter could launch an iTunes-like vehicle in which is could offer premium services, and get a cut of the action.
4. Hire some sales and marketing people to aggressively pursue new business opportunities. For example, Twitter could easily get into the e-commerce business based on the torrent of recommendations and suggestions made by Twitter users.
5. Buy a corporate jet. Given all the travel done by Stone and Williams recently, a private jet might come in handy. Given the economy, you can probably pick on up for a bargain-basement price. I’m sure the Google Boys – Page and Brin – could give them some pointers.
Bonus: Twitter should spend some buck to strengthen its infrastructure to support a more robust API ecosystem. This would give it the ability to charge third-parties a fee to make high-volume API calls, while providing a free service to low-volume players. Twitter recently placed a limit on its API to 20,000 requests/hour.
5 Comments
Excellent recommendations there Mark. The lads with the money, and the actual venture capital fund people, all talked hyperbole when the announcement was made, leaving me wondering whether they were playing their cards close to their vests or they were waiting for comments like yours to tweet their collective imaginations and brain cells.
David,
Thanks for the comment. I think – or hope! – Williams and Stone already have a good idea of what to do with $35M.
Then again, if someone offers you a whack of cash at a great valuation, you take it. During the latter stages of the initial dot-com boom, many companies turned down cash thinking the money would always be there – only to discover it can disappear as fast as it appeared.
I have no doubt that Twitter should buy at least one of the great applications that have sprung up. Google + YouTube isn't exactly the same, but Twitter should model that as far as possible to add value to its membership.
great article Mark, I think Tweetdeck is the way to go.
I only agree 1 and 2 only