Twitter Targets 1 Billion Users by 2013
We’ve been commenting about Twitter for quite a while. Twitter is oviously one of the most popular social media platforms out there. And obviously, one which is seen having great potential. Everyone was estimating that Twitter would earn a lot in the near future, however, few had the data to estimate how much. Do a search and you’ll understand the speculation over Twitter’s plans to earn money ranging from premium accounts to virtual money. But the revelation is out. Twitter expects its first revenue in Q3. They expected $400,000 (approximately INR 1.95 crore) in this quarter with a robust $4 million (19.5 crores) in Q4. The numbers Twitter are targeting by the end of 2013: 1 billion users, $1.54 billion in revenue, 5,200 employees and $1.1 billion in net earnings.
Recently, there was a hack-attack on the email and twitter accounts of Twitter founder Evan Williams, his wife and several other employees. This was back in May. On the 14th of July, Techcrunch announced to the world that they had access to over 300 documents, ranging from executive meeting notes, partner agreements and financial projections to the meal preferences, calendars and phone logs of various Twitter employees.
Techcrunch has decided to capitalise on this unexpected stroke of luck (?). Their argument is that since the documents are going public anyway, they’d like to publish some stories, obviously with sanction. There are also documents about a Twitter TV show (Final Tweet). The details on the page include documents highlighting its conceptualisation including a lot of what sounds like the new Twitargon (Twit+Jargon?) which ends up sounding like baby talk.
I do not deny Techcrunch the right to publish the documents. What is to be commended is their shrewdness in releasing one article at a time. The last line in the Twitter finance summary was “So what’s the product that they believe will bring in $400k in revenue this quarter? That’s something we’ll discuss in our next post.” – a very shrewd strategy to ensure people stay glued on to more updates.
What’s the future? So far, Twitter had avoided giving any statistics. But the ball game has changed. What’s next? There’s little scope of speculating now, since the documents ought to say the light of day eventually. What’s interesting is to see how Market analysts have to say. Recently Rupert Murdoch was found saying “We don’t want Twitter“. Many had also rejected Twitter’s contribution to marketing saying they don’t see any monetisation potential. The data should obviously prove them wrong.
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Raman…howdy doo?
A google news alert led me here. Gotta love that stuff.