On Twitter

I have a little motto that I like to operate by: Think strategically; act accordingly.

So given the not so hard to predict revelation that Twitter is going to directly compete with its ‘hole-filling’ 3rd party developers, let’s see if we can’t put my motto to work and come up with a strategy to employ as a 3rd party Twitter developer.

Let’s start with a few assumptions.

1) Twitter is going to want to generate revenue.

2) Twitter’s business model (at least one of them) will focus on advertising.

3) Somewhere around 2/3 of the “Twitter experience” is happening via 3rd party clients and/or applications.

From these assumptions it’s not a large leap to guess that Twitter needs to start owning the “Twitter experience” if they plan to monetize it via display advertising. Hence, the release of an official BlackBerry client and the acquisition of Tweetie.

You, the 3rd party developer, have an edge. Let’s focus particularly on assumption #3. This represents a weakness for Twitter and an opportunity for you. In order to save time, I will lay out a potential strategy, bulletpoint style:

- Capture your current user base. If you’re a solely a Twitter client, diversify. This one is fairly obvious, but that doesn’t mean isn’t a good idea. Twitter’s platform isn’t terribly complicated to build, and there are already a number of open source stuff out there. Turn those Twitter users using you app or serive into YOUR users. Offer value above and beyond what Twitter itself is or can offer.

- Use Twitter as a customer acquisition channel. I won’t add much here as this is pretty obvious.

In short, continue to use Twitter as a feature to attract users, but remove your reliance on the Twitter platform itself as much as possible.