This is the second part of a series on the future of Twitter development: Part I, Part III.
Twitter ads are the fuel that will soon run the Twitter API development world. I spent a lot of time thinking about this on my recent road trip. Data from users interacting with Twitter ads can be expanded upon and optimized by API developers. This creates a win-win-win model: developers make money helping clients use Twitter ads more effectively, businesses get a better return on their investment and Twitter sells more ads to happy clients.
The current Twitter for Business marketing campaign is convincing businesses to spend increasing amounts of ad money on Twitter; $600 million last year and over one billion projected this year. You know what’s cool? Breaking that threshold and envisioning how the economics of Twitter ad buying will mature as billions of dollars start flowing.
Developers will be able to make money from this revenue stream by extending and optimizing Twitter ads for businesses. They will be the labor force that helps ad buyers leverage the leads and data they collect. For instance, once you have thousands of screen names and email addresses from Lead Generation Cards, you still need to engage with these people. Ad buyers could simply treat these leads as a normal mailing list, but that misses the whole formula of Twitter.
Leads plus engagement produces relationships. Energy strategically applied to relationships produces communities of loyal customers and supporters.
The integration of API developers with the Twitter ad buying cycle creates a more robust and innovative economy that benefits all parties.
Twitter Economy
We will have an economy where the financial interests of Twitter, businesses and developers are aligned. There will be large third party companies that sell general solutions, and smaller development teams who customize the results from Twitter’s API and Twitter ad data to provide vertical market solutions. I’ll describe this future API developer labor force in more detail tomorrow.
