1. Charge for it
2. Advertising
3. Create a contextual ad engine
4. Charge for analytics
5. Enable Mobile Payments
6. Create subscription based groups
7. A Twitter Pro version
8. Merchandising
9. Sell the company

(h/t The Standard is running online betting on whether Twitter adopts a revenue model by June 30, 2009)

Here are examples/interpretations of each business model:

1) Charge for it.

Yesterday, real estate social network Active Rain announced its new $29/month fee for new members who want to post consumer-facing articles on Active Rain. The real estate industry is unique in its widespread adoption of the social media for business networking purposes, and Active Rain’s ability to connect its real estate agent members with consumers looking for a realtor makes pay-to-play an ROI proposition. $29/month may leverage one lead that can contribute $1,000s in fee income. There are active discussions on this policy at Active Rain (570 comments+) and Bloodhound Realty Blog.

I believe this is the first pay-to-play move by a large social network of 130,000+ members. It’s a courageous move that can be only assessed in hindsight based on future adoption rate.

2) 3) Advertising is being viewed too critically by the social community as a marketing relic or at worse, propaganda. Contextual ads a la Google Adwords could well work because Search.Twitter.com replicates a real time search engine.

4) Charge for analytics – Real time data mining of Twitter feeds in aggregate can create enterprise services for industries like finance and retailing that rely on instant trend analysis. Feb 14 Forbes discusses the analytics model.

5) Enable mobile payments – AdAge points to VC Nate Westheimer’s treatise that Twitter’s ubiquity on mobile devices can make it a mobile Paypal platform. The uploading of the iPhone picture of Flight #1549 in the Hudson onto Twitter application Twitpic is evidence of Twitter becoming an event-based mobile platform.

6) Create subscription based groups – Yammer, Present.ly and other enterprise Twitter platforms are developing. Twitter can watch them and replicate.

7) A Twitter Pro Version – isn’t that Friendfeed?

Merchandising – there are already a lot of characters on Twitter including the actors of Madmen. Have companies and users develop a stable of Twitter characters, brand and merchandise them.

9) Sell the company – the original strategy.

1. Magnetic
The purpose should draw people directly to participate, immediately appealing to the “What’s in it for me” characteristic.

2. Aligned
Purpose should align with business value, that is the “What’s in it for the business” value, be it direct or indirect.

3. Low Risk
Organizations are advised to resist the temptation to opt for high-risk communities, which seem to offer the greatest potential for business value. They are better revisited once social applications have gained momentum.

4. Properly scoped
Gartner advises organizations to start with a minimal scope and focus on growing a community’s scale as fast as possible. Once the community has scaled up, users will guide on how to expand the scope.

5. Facilitates Evolution
Purposes must be selected that both the organization and community can build on. A “purpose road map” will allow for growing the scope of communities or establishing other applications and communities with the goal of progressing toward a highly collaborative enterprise.

6. Measurable
The success of a good purpose can be measured. Especially early on, when organizations are skeptical of social applications, Gartner advises choosing a purpose where business and community value can be clearly measured.

7. Community-Driven
The value must come from the community. The best communities contribute far more to themselves than do the enterprises that support them. If the purpose requires the enterprise to contribute most of the content, and the community participants are mere readers, the enterprise has simply used the new technologies as another channel to push communications.

The Real Estate Industry Fit

Although the article is focused on Enterprise Social Software, the real estate industry as a vertical fits all of Gartner’s observations and has been a breeding ground for social networks:

1. Magnetic: What’s in it for me? Personal brand marketing to a massive local consumer market.
2. Alignment: Personal brand marketing translates into online lead generation.
3. Low risk: Conversations revolve around low risk business topics related to real estate, not personal expression.
4. Properly scoped: Real estate social networks like Active Rain have grown organically, and introduced new products like Localism based on participant demand.
5. Facilitates evolution: The real estate blogosphere continually adopt new technologies and solutions based on their business development potential.
6. Measurable: Real estate participants continually advocate social media as a powerful marketing play that gets results.
7. Community driven: The real estate blogosphere is as intimate as their tech counterparts. They gather at conferences and seem to act and opine as a group.

Although a blog is the best social media construct for the creation of personal branding and messaging, the broader professional population is challenged by the writing and time commitment demands to develop a well trafficked blog. One year ago, blogging was essentially the defacto standard for developing an online voice. With the massive adoption of micro-blogging applications like Twitter (and many others), a professional doesn’t need journalistic skills, just the  ability to type out interesting soundbites and converse as if on an IM. Finally, social media aggregation applications like Friendfeed and SocialMedian now track every participant activity – blog posts, bookmarking, Twitter feeds, etc. – and displays the activity in a time line. In essence, this is a complete record of one’s online identity and message.

New social networks will leverage the feed aggregation features that Friendfeed introduced to replicate the conversational nature of “commenting” on comments that characterizes Friendfeed. For example, a real estate brokerage site might include a stream of relevant Twitter feeds being shared by their agents (see mockup image to the left). These comments would be specific to the housing markets: new open houses, new sales data, local events, and would not include any of the “what I had for lunch” detritus. A Tweeter can parse the relevant comments to be included in the feed stream by tagging with a hashmark (#) identifier, which Twitter’s search engine can identify and incorporate into a feed. For example, Social Median participants who want to add their Twitter comment to the Social Median comment stream can add the hashtag #sm to their Tweet.

Conclusion: Feeds are nothing more than content syndication systems that can be embedded into any website and make that website an extension to any social network relevant to its message.