How does Twitter make money? Even Twitter doesn’t know yet

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Of course, that far future is dependent on another important factor: money. Twitter does not yet earn any (the company is “pre-revenue”, as Williams puts it), and while it has plenty of venture capital investment in the bank (to pay for what Williams calls “the usual startup stuff: salaries, servers, rent”), there will need to be an income eventually.

Again, unlike his critics, Williams sees no need to rush things. He’s toying with many ideas for making money and is keen to adopt something that stems directly from the functionality Twitter provides, rather than simply slapping banner adverts on top of its web pages. Might Twitter start acting as a bank for small payments between users, for example?

“We don’t have any specific plans for a payment system, though that’s interesting. But we definitely are striving for (and believe we can achieve) a built-in revenue model that is compatible with the open nature of Twitter and its ecosystem, rather than something tacked-on.”

Well there you are. Now I don’t feel so bad about not having a clue how they made money.