Where will Twitter Go from Here?

Twitter is at a bit of a crossroads in its development.

While it has been working on its infrastructure and building it’s staff of nearly 30, it has relied on venture capital for funding, but early in 2009, the company has announced, that it intends to eventually, “become a sustainable business supported by a revenue model.”

In the world of Web 2.0, there are basically three ways to get money – from investors, from advertisers, or from users. Ultimately, whoever is paying for the service, has control of it.

If a company is heavily reliant on investors, it is beholden to those investors, to meet the goals of the investors, whether they be monetary or otherwise. We watched Digg.com go down this path a couple of years ago, much to its detriment.

As a fan of Twitter, I’m happy to see that it is moving away from this option. But then that leaves advertisers or user-paid services.

Either way, the company is likely to receive complaints – users, who have been enjoying an increasingly great service for a couple of years now are not going to appreciate the change. But the company needs to stay in business somehow.

The problem with advertisers is that are answering to their customers, and must be choosy about the content on the websites they advertise on, and they often end up indirectly controlling the content.

The problem with paid service is that, well, users prefer “free” to “paid,” all other things being equal.

Co-Founder of Twitter, Evan Williams recently hinted that Twitter may use some sort of tiered approach, and charging corporate who are using the service for sales and customer service.

I personally hope Twitter does take the paid service approach. This will allow the company to be more independent, and user-centric, and will allow the company to continue to let the users have more control over the content. Assuming the pricing structure is reasonable for business clients, it will also allow the service to earn a profit.