Benchmark's Rich Barton: Twitter will succeed as a business |
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Benchmark's Rich Barton: Twitter will succeed as a business
Rich Barton isn't sure what money-making business model will click for Twitter, but he's confident that the San Francisco micro-messaging service will figure something out.
"I think price and value always converge over time, and clearly Twitter is highly valuable to the millions who are now using it every day," said Barton in an interview with TechFlash. "I know the Twitter team has an abundance of business model ideas, some will work, most won’t, but I’m absolutely sure it will succeed not just from a user perspective, but also as a business."
The former Expedia CEO is best known as the leader of Zillow.com. But he's also a venture partner at Benchmark Capital, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm that just participated in Twitter's $35 million venture round. As part of that funding, the Seattle technology executive will be working with Benchmark's Peter Fenton to help figure out how to make money off the latest Web phenomenon.
"I’m sure I’ll be spending more time with the Twitter crew as a result of the Benchmark investment," said Barton, who oversaw the online travel agency Expedia during its hyper-growth phase.
Barton started actively using Twitter about a month ago and since then he's become "addicted." He recently started using TweetDeck and Tweety, and now has 162 followers,
"I’m convinced it is something very important," says Barton. "I think it will become my second inbox."
In addition to Benchmark, Twitter is backed by Institutional Venture Partners, Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital. Bezos Expeditions, the personal investment vehicle for Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, also is an investor.
Figuring out a business model for Twitter or one that builds off the momentum of the service has become somewhat of a sport in the startup community. Silicon Alley Insider recently held a Twitter business plan competition. At the recent Seattle Startup Weekend, several of the proposals (TweetReporterts, TweetSum) were connected to the microblogging service. I also met with a Seattle Internet company on Friday that recently purchased a site in order to aggregate Twitter content. (More to come on that later.)
Internet entrepreneurs are certainly intrigued by the concept. So what advice would you give to Barton to make money off it?
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