2009 the Year of the Business model
YouTube, Digg and Twitter. Three great websites with a massive following. But these websites all have one big problem: They don’t know how to make money. 2009 will be the year of the business model. These three services will have to to find a way to convert all their visitors and exposure into money. Because if they can’t make money than they are useless from a commercial point of view.
YouTube
Google, owner of Youtube, will have to cut it’s losses when YouTube keeps burning cash. So Google is likely to push the adwords idea through on YouTube. A sponsored video is likely to pop up on YouTube search results any time soon. We’re already seeing advertising in the actual video’s.
Digg
Digg is becoming a bottomless well. Digg has 22.6 million unique monthly visitors but last year they lost 2.6 million dollar. I’m very interreseted in the way Digg will try to earn money this year. They have a very though demographic (18-35 year old males) who are not really sensitive for banner advertising.
Twitter
Twitter has been booming the last year. It’s becoming mainstream and has a hard time keeping the service up and running because their servers can’t handle the load. And the infrastructure costs money. Lots of money. But don’t worry the godfather of Twitter, Evan Williams, said they have found a way to make money but he is keeping it a secret for now. Exciting. My guess is that they will start selling data. All those people are twittering about products and services, data which could be very useful for big corporations. It’s also an ideal way to find out what’s hot. If a lot of people start twittering about the same subject it’s bound to get hot.
As I said, 2009 has to be the year of the businnes model and making money, Else we might see some little bubbles burst again.
