Can Viral Twitter Content be Automated?

Photo of author

By Jacob Maslow

Twitter NYSEIf Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) is serious about generating a sustainable profit, it has to drop its current monetization model. Its current monetization model really is a rehashed version of Facebook’s advertising-based revenue model. That revenue model works for Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) ; it doesn’t work for Twitter.

 

If Twitter is serious about making tons of money, it should focus on automating content viralization. If you notice, there are certain YouTube videos that suddenly explode in popularity. A lot of that are due to Facebook and Twitter. When influential people on Twitter get really excited about a specific piece of content, that content can become very popular overnight. If Twitter wants to make a lot of money, it only needs to figure out the viralization formula of content on Twitter.

 

The key to doing this is to forget the myth of viral marketing. The myth is that content is so powerful that people on their own would evangelize that content. While that happens on an isolated basis, that is not enough to make a piece of content truly viral. A content only becomes viral because it excites a relatively small group of people. These people are highly influential. These people might be celebrities, niche authorities, or political figures. Whatever their stature is, they have a lot of influence. Whatever content they share tend to be reshared by people that follow them.

 

Twitter should make it its mission to rationalize the whole content viralization process and build a business model on it. By making influence marketing more predictable and more importantly, rationalizing it and automating it, Twitter can become a moneymaking machine. I’ve always maintained that Twitter is not a simple microblogging platform. In fact, it’s not a business-to-consumer platform. Instead, it’s a business-to-business platform. I just wish that Twitter’s management can wrap their heads around that concept. They would definitely be making more money if they did.

Images Courtesy of DepositPhotos