Since the social networking application, Twitter, hit the popularity stakes, there’s been a silence from Twitter Corp, the crowd behind it, as to how they are going to make money from it. I know Web2.0 is about getting investors to fund cool things, but eventually someone has to start seeing income, otherwise wages, technical infrastructure, ping pong tables, office leasing and everything will become the past.

Here’s a few of my thoughts on ways they could monetise Twitter, not all of them I would agree with (nor would most users I imagine);

1. Allow for inline advertising from ‘twitter bots’. Especially if there was very low volume of tweets, and no method for users to block them.

2. Create a real-time media monitoring service, where companies can get notified every time a key word or phrase is mentioned on Twitter (either by twitters own tools, email or weekly PDF report, linked to the individual tweets).

3. Text advertising on the web interface. I’m thinking Text Link Ads, Google Adsense, etc.

4. Offering paid ‘premium accounts’ which allow for either more tweets per day, no maximum cap on people you are following, posting of multimedia, etc.

5. Charges per inbound text. Many people are using the SMS service – perhaps a simple 55 cent per inbound text system would help pay the bills?

6. Licensing for other application uses – Ebay could embed mentions of products with the actual product. Technorati could add tweets along with posts, blogs, videos and everythign else they index.

7. Selling of generic statistical data – I’m thinking great statistical data here, such as how many times did CompanyX or ProductY gets mentioned last month. Trending graphs could be created, and compared to competitor companies or products.

8. Stand alone Twitter servers for intranets – think of it as a massive LAN messaging system. Similar to Google selling their Google Appliance, Twitter could be used in organisations of hundreds and thousands of employees as a simple messaging system (Miles, you have a call on line 13!)

9. Marketing information – those with the most followers could be considered ‘centres of influence’. Being able to target these users would be gold in a marketers eye. Perhaps advertisers could message them, tweet to them or *gasp* get their email addresses.

10. Create interactive surveys – send a tweet to 10,000 twitterers, and ask them to …post @yes for yes, or @no for no… kind of simple surveys would be a great tool for companies.

11. Sell official Twitter merchandise. Everyone else does it. Who doesn’t want to buy a Twitter tee or Twitter beanie?

12. Sell the company. I know, not very original, but there’s surely got to be at least two companies starting with Y or G who would love to get their hands on Twitter.

Who else has suggestions? I’m sure we can whip up a list for the Twitter team, which includes at least one they may not have thought of.

Image: Screengrab of a default twitter tweet screen.

So, we’re doing it. I’ve been talking about it for a while, so we have finally organised passports for the kids, and we’re off to Bali, Indonesia for two weeks in the second half of October.

We’ll be staying in beach front Sanur for a week, and then up to the hills and Ubud for a week, and no doubt visiting everywhere else as well. The plan is relax, eat, drink, shop, relax, eat…you get the idea.

The kids are practicing some basic Bahasa at home the last few weeks, so cute when Leia goes to Kindy and says to her teacher ‘Selamat Pagi!’ (Good morning).

So, anyone got any inside tips on where to eat or visit in either area, whilst we’re there? I have only ever been to Kuta before, back in 2003.

Image: A family worth of passports.

This blog appeared as a result of attending Web Essentials 2005 in September 2005 in Sydney. Since then, the conference has evolved into Web Directions South, with a few of my posts from WDS 2006 hitting this blog, and now a ‘warm up’ post for Web Directions South 2007.

Why a warm up post? Well, it’s not for another six weeks, and although the speakers and topics have (mostly) been announced, there’s still no actual schedule as yet, so there could be conflicts in timings for some of the following.

Here’s a short list of some of the presentations that I am hoping to attend (in no particular order);

Andy Clarke presenting The October Revolution. Andy presented last year, and not only was a smooth public speaker, he made Keynote shine, and he hung out more than once with the Perth crew.

Pushing beyond design sounds like a great topic, by RedBubble team member, Justin French. I visited the offices of RedBubble back in 2006, and they certainly have some cool stuff rolling out.

Being interested in SEO, Scott Gledhill talking on Is SEO Evil? should be an enjoyable presentation.

George Oates, an Australian working on that little photo sharing site, Flickr, will be presenting Human Traffic.

Mark Pesce did a fantastic closing keynote for last year, and he is back this year with Mob Rules. We’ll be expecting another motivating close to the conference no doubt.

A big part of the national trip to attend Web Directions on the other side of Australia is the chance to socialise with your peers in a licensed venue. This year, we’ve gone one better and hired most of a pub for our accommodation. I’m looking forward to the networking that’s for sure.

Speaking of team building, I am looking forward to hearing local Googler Carl Sjogreen speaking on the topic of Building and managing great development teams.

WDS 2006 drinking partner, Ben Winter-Giles, is joining the line up with a talk entitled Managing agile projects in large organisations. Ben is a fluent and passionate person, so I can’t wait to see what he has in store for us (No red wine, OK Ben?).

So there’s seven of the presentations, however they all look to be worth attending – the challenge is trying to get to as many as possible, and at least absorb some of it.

All in all, I’m glad they’ve managed to add another stream, so now we have Design, Development and Management & Strategy streams. Here’s looking forward to late September!

Image: Seats at Web Directions South 06 (prior to the doors opening).