Should brands pay to Twitter?

There's been a lot of discussion this week on rumours that Twitter is considering charging brands to get involved with the platform.

Twitter is an innovative way to communicate with customers, but, as a paid-for communications vehicle, the returns are untested. There are many other proven digital channels that would take priority in a brand’s marketing budget.

Twitter’s dilemma is creating a business model and beginning to repay its initial $20m venture capital investment. To start by charging brands a subscription seems counter intuitive. Firstly, there’s the whole area of enforcement - how would brand involvement be policed? And, secondly, will enough brands get involved to create a sustainable business model?

Twittering takes a larger investment than the subscription cost - there’s the continual demand for content creation, and reaction to ‘Tweets’ that have a direct cost for brands.

A better approach would be for Twitter to monetise its site traffic through online advertising, or search, in a similar way to Facebook. Then it could allow brands that want to Tweet to continue their involvement, and prove the effectiveness of Twitter as its user base grows.

Introducing a paid-for-subscription service once the brand case has been made seems a wiser option.