Jason Calacanis thinks monetizing Twitter should be easy - from his one of his recent emails, which I got a copy of:

The point is that Twitter has the ability to unleash a direct marketing business the likes of which the world has NEVER seen. I predict they will, and when they do, they will make the Twitter nay-sayers look like the donkeys they really are. (Note: you ever notice the folks who have the most to say about making money are the ones who've never made any? Exactly.)

This all relates to his offer to pay Twitter $250k to be placed into their recommended user list for a period of time. Sounds easy, right? Well, maybe. If it really were that easy, I presume Twitter would have gone that way already. However, a one time payment of $250k for placement into the list doesn't add up to that much money (unless you make the list so large that its value is diluted).

The thing is, his idea is an ok one, but it has limited value. It's great for the people on that list, and it would bring a quick infusion of cash to Twitter. But.... it would be limited. I suppose you could have a rotating list (just as you can pay Google to run ads based on a specified budget) - but it remains to be seen whether that could generate the kind of cash inflow Calacanis is talking about. It's not clear to me that this kind of scheme could raise enough money on its own to pay Twitter's bills.

It might be part of the answer for Twitter, but I seriously doubt that it's the full answer. This relates back to my earlier post on Facebook. Thus far, it seems to be much easier to gather users than it is to monetize them.

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