Big Data Licensing as a Twitter Monetization Tool

The social network Twitter is still not profitable, despite the company's efforts. Previously, the company’s management made several attempts to monetize the service: this includes paid posts, advertising demonstration to the user, and other similar methods.

In fact, a reliable way to monetize Twitter may not be at all with the text itself, the messages, but the behavioral factors of users . These factors can be analyzed, studied, ranked according to the needs of partners, and sold. At the same time, the information sold is not personal. This is averaged and aggregated data.

Tweets of celebrities or users moaning due to the cancellation of the flight, at first glance, are neither informative nor useful. In fact, such messages may be extremely important for some companies or individuals. For example, a fast-food restaurant chain, after studying information from Twitter, might think about changing the recipe for making french fries. Big brands like Dove can launch campaigns like #SpeakBeautiful, recommending everyone to put themselves in order before attending the Oscars. Well, Jakarta authorities can quickly respond to reports of flooding in certain regions, directing people to safe areas, which officials can get information from on the same Twitter.
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All of these are real examples. Twitter Vice President Chris Moody has already said that a data-based business could be a fairly large social networking project this year.

How Twitter makes money on Big Data

Twitter first showed its intention to make money on Big Data last year when it acquired Gnip for $ 134 million. The team of this company, including its head Chris Moody, joined the Twitter team after the merger. At the same time 110 people continue to work in the division, which deals exclusively with Big Data, studying the possible ways of using the enormous amount of information that users of the service generate.

This division in the current year will only increase. With the help of technology and Gnip employees, Twitter will license its data. So, Twitter sells a subscription for the right to use the service database to companies such as Oracle, Saleforce, and IBM. The latter use information to analyze and obtain an information product useful to their customers. In addition, Twitter began to sell data to direct consumers - advertising sharks, who use information to advertise products and services more successfully.

Already in the fourth quarter of 2014, Twitter earned more than $ 45 million from licensing and other projects. Now it is only 9.5% of the total income of the company, but there are some reasons to say that soon this budget item will become much more profitable.



In October, Twitter and IBM signed a cooperation agreement, which, according to representatives of both companies, should "change the decision-making process." The scale of the new project is very large. For example, under the agreement, IBM will train 10,000 consultants who, in turn, will teach other people how to use Twitter data in business structures. If each consultant then trains another 100 people, then the project can become one of the largest educational programs. Twitter itself would never manage to reach such horizons.

Chris Moody says that at the beginning of Gnip, he had to spend 50-75% of his time working to convince people of the usefulness of data from Twitter. Now not only Moody understands this, but thousands of other people, including partners from companies of the IBM rank.

Marketers and advertising agencies have also realized the importance of the data that Twitter generates. Now, representatives of these companies can only learn to use the information of the social network to their advantage.

Not Twittered One

The short message service itself is not unique: there are data on hundreds of millions of users on Facebook, Google and other similar platforms.

However, only Twitter gives the partners use their data - this is the time, plus many of the company's partners have an idea of ​​how to use this information. At the same time, the social network shares information that can be called personal, and that which anyone can use.

According to the same Chris Moody, reports of aircraft flight delays are general information. But the direct messages exchanged between users - this is private information that can not be touched.

All these data help different companies to keep up with the times, and to know what the masses are thinking about - what is important now and what is not.

Twitter has big plans for Big Data, and these plans, as well as the service itself, cannot be underestimated.