Twitter’s famous question, what are you doing? Is certainly a great conversation starter, but how can the company make money when many of its users don’t even visit the site directly.

It’s a throwback to the Internet bust last decade, when lots of startups connected with startup capital and started operating without a way of actually making money.

Twitter makes even a newer industry like blogging look slow with its legions of hyper-connected users swapping the latest gossip and newsbytes.

The company is always working to stir up more tweets and chatter by adding features like Tweetgifts, and additional connections to external services through its extensive APIs.

Competitors like Pownce and Twitterific are making money by charging their users outright for specific services rendered. For example with Pownce, it’s possible to broadcast a premium message which is pushed into other user’s streams for a price.

Twitter mentions some specific use cases on its site, “eating soup? Research shows that moms want to know. Running late to a meeting? Your co–workers might find that useful. Partying? Your friends may want to join you.”

It’s also a place to find information about virtually any topic, posting a question to the community generally yields dozens of responses. With the right circle of friends in place, responses can even have a professional tone.

For now, Twitter seems content developing its service offering further and thinking of new ways to send small bits of text back and forth. If nothing else works out, they could always lobby for an acquisition.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 10:11 pm under Internet.

Read more entries by Matt Jansen.
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