Business Model of Twitter Social Media

Question: Describe about the Business Model of Twitter for Social Media. Answer: Introduction The continuous evolution of the software services with the advent of technology in various segments of the human life have made the survival of the older companies challenging thus making evolution the necessity of life (Smith Fischer and Yongjian 2012). In order to understand the need of the revenue and the various impacts of advertising forces upon the social media sites, this paper aims to scrutinize the various aspects of charging the individual customers of twitter. In an effort to understand the impact, the pros and the cons have been presented and finally recommendations were provided. Charging individual users of twitter Twitter is a social media site which allows user to share and post small messages of 140 words which are named tweets. As per the services provided by the website the registered users can both post and access tweets but an unregistered user can only read them(Twitter Help Center, 2016). The multi-sided users are those users who act as the mediator among two sides thus benefitting from both the sides. The micro blogging site has more than 200 million users who are active in a month and share more than double the tweets per day, thus making Twitter extremely lucrative to the advertisement of the business.But the recent trends of the market have been disappointing for the company as the market share of the organization has been trading below the IPO(Forbes.com, 2016). According to the report in Forbes (2016), the website is neither easy to use nor is user friendly but the usage of the site by the affluent class of the society has made is hold the gates of the company, which is closing f ast. So twitter can be seen more as a PR site rather than which allows people to share and be heard. According to a report in Techcrunch (2009), the company was about to charge other companies for accessing elite services that will be carved out for them, but was eventually cancelled. There are various advantages and disadvantages of charging the users who use the website which will be discussed in the later section. Advantages of charging individual users There are various advantages of charging the services of social media site which ranges from better user base to safety of the child, etc. which have been presented below (Bolton et al. 2013). Quality of services Since the user of the websites provide the necessary monetary help for the upkeep and the maintenance of the website, the quality of the services are better compared to the free websites where the users have little say in the various matters(Silverthorne, 2016). Ad Free websites The revenue of the websites are generated from the advertisements that are done on the website by a thorough understanding of the users, which is often very annoying, paying money for the websites will help eliminate such advertisements. User data will not be scrutinised As there wont be any interest of the website to generate revenue through advertisement, the data mining will not be used for understanding the user behaviour and pattern (Russell 2013). More responsible users Since the services are paid only the serious users, who are interested in website will pay, thus creating a more responsible user base for the website, thus reducing the potential misuse by people and child (Fuchs 2013). Disadvantages of charging individual users There are various disadvantages of charging the services of the social media site which will not only hamper the number of user but will also create more addicted user base for the website. Reduced amount of user Although the user base of the paid services are more stable compared to the free ones, the amount of user for the free services is always larger compared to the paid ones, thus reducing the consumer base (Stephen and Galak 2012). Information can still be traded for money Although the paid services suffice all the financial needs of the website, still the data available on the website could be traded to useful information. Paid users are more serious The paid users of the websites are more serious about the website and tend to be more possessive thus creating more addiction that might be extremely harmful (Tuten and Solomon 2014). Recommendations It is highly recommended that the social media website should charge its user for using the services of the website. This will not only reduce the dependency of the website on the advertisers and will allow the website to focus on the services that are to be provided to the consumers. Also the lesser extent of data mining will also ensure that the privacy of the user is well maintained and is not compromised to suit the need of the advertisers. The paid services will attract only the responsible user into the site discouraging the minor out of these websites thus reducing various risks like virtual identity suicide, psychological effects of the websites, online bullying, trolling. Paying for using the services of Twitter will allow in creation of a close group which is more responsible for the actions and hence will help in reduction of social media malice which is now common to the present generation. Conclusion In the previous segments the various aspects of the paid twitter services have been discussed thus creating an opportunity to evaluate the impact of charging the services of the social media site.For understanding the impact on the various aspect of the society the advantages of charging the services and disadvantages of charging the services have been presented in detail. Finally the recommendations have been given for charging the services for Twitter have been suggested to ensure the various malice related to the free social media services could be contained. References Bolton, R.N., Parasuraman, A., Hoefnagels, A., Migchels, N., Kabadayi, S., Gruber, T., Komarova Loureiro, Y. and Solnet, D., 2013. Understanding Generation Y and their use of social media: a review and research agenda.Journal of Service Management,24(3), pp.245-267. Forbes.com. (2016). Forbes Welcome. 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Sage. Twitter Help Center. (2016). Getting started with Twitter. [online] Available at: https://support.twitter.com/articles/215585 [Accessed 24 Nov. 2016]. Wauters, R. (2016). Twitter To Start Charging Companies For Having AnAccount?. [online] TechCrunch. Available at: https://techcrunch.com/2009/02/10/twitter-to-start-charging-companies-for-having-an-account/ [Accessed 24 Nov. 2016].