Twitter’s ad revenue has been struggling over the past year, and they are apparently looking for new ways to bring in some cash. According to a survey that they recently released, they may be looking at offering a premium version of their TweetDeck service, which is currently completely free and ad-free.
If they decide that they want to move forward with this, it will be curious to see what type of premium features they are able to offer to their subscribers. The current users already get free access and no ads, which are what most ‘freemium’ type services are able to offer. They may offer a mobile version of the service, allow users to bookmark content to come back to later, and have a few other options to help lure people in. Whether or not this is something people would be willing to pay for, however, is a big question.
According to a statement from a Twitter spokesperson, “We’re conducting this survey to assess the interest in a new, more enhanced version of TweetDeck. We regularly conduct user research to gather feedback about people’s Twitter experience and to better inform our product investment decisions, and we’re exploring several ways to make TweetDeck even more valuable for professionals.”
This is obviously very early on in the process, and nothing may come of it. It may be another sign of Twitter’s desperation to find new revenue streams to keep themselves viable, or more likely, to make themselves more attractive to a potential buyer.
