Crenk

Twitter is now a service that has been on the rise for over a year. This being said there are more and more Twitter related applications being launched, but still no monetization strategy for Twitter directly.

Last week Twhirl, a Twitter Adobe AIR application was sold to Seesmic, making this the first AIR application which has been acquired, just showing the popularity of Twitter and AIR.

Other applications out there are, Spaz, TweetStats, Twitterholic, Twitter Fan Wiki, Snitter, Twitstat, Twittervision and over 100 more applications. In coming weeks I will be running through some of these applications and actually work out which ones are worth using.

In terms on monetizing this is an interesting issue for Twitter to develop. At present Im not aware of their monetization strategy. I think they have some very basic options to choose from. 1. display advertising. The ads can be displayed at the bottom of the right hand side bar. This seems like a simple way to monetize the site and also very unobtrusive. 2. Sponsored Tweets. Messages could be sent to a certain demographic of Twitter users, obviously for a tailored price. 3. There also might be a way to monetize friend following. We all know the more followers you have on the site, the more discussions your have and potential for clicks off Twitter to your own site.

Are there any more monetization strategies I might be missing?

Seesmic which claims to be the Twitter for video has just acquired Twhirl. Although Seesmic is still in Alpha this seems to be a good purchase on the outside. Twhirl is one of the most popular Adobe AIR apps and allows users to post to their Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce accounts. This is the first acquisition ever of a pure AIR application and im sure it wont be the last.

For other coverage on this acquisition take a look at BlogHerald and Mashable. Im also interested to see what Arrington has to say about the acquisition, because he is an investor in Seesmic, however Mark Hendrickson did the review for Techcrunch of the story.