UPDATED 11:23 EST / JANUARY 24 2011

Twitter is Getting Richer This Year, Ads Revenues Seen As Prime Cash Magnet

With a great deal of media attention being harnessed, Twitter is bound to pump up its revenue by 300% this year. This prediction from eMarketer goes with a premise of the social networking site capitalizing on ads and its flourishing products.

Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer principal analyst, sees huge potential on ads to boost Twitter’s revenue this year. She relates, “If Twitter can grow its user base and convince marketers of its value as a go-to secondary player to Facebook, it will succeed in gaining revenue. In 2011 it must work overtime to give its early advertisers a positive experience.”

In November 2010, Pew Internet & American Life Project noted that just 8% of online Americans use Twitter service. However, eMarketer is quite optimistic that earnings of Facebook’s runner-up will reach upwards of $150 million, despite the growing competition. Further forecasts see a whopping $250 million in revenue for the year 2012, again with an assertion that Twitter will live up to the hype.

Twitter, which has more than 175 million registered users globally, is currently competing for advertising dollars with larger companies like search giant Google Inc. and social-networking rival Facebook.  The company will need to enhance its user base while demonstrating that ads posted on the site are effective and influential.

Twitter has already seen ups and downs for the first weeks of the new year. A report by Kit Doston of SiliconAngle covered the company’s legal battle against VS Technologies, when the latter filed for for patent infringement case on US patent no. 6,408,309. On the other hand, Tweets seemed to be gaining a solid following and tremendous popularity, with Techmeme now utilizing this service for their news-breaking and commentary threads.


Since you’re here …

… We’d like to tell you about our mission and how you can help us fulfill it. SiliconANGLE Media Inc.’s business model is based on the intrinsic value of the content, not advertising. Unlike many online publications, we don’t have a paywall or run banner advertising, because we want to keep our journalism open, without influence or the need to chase traffic.The journalism, reporting and commentary on SiliconANGLE — along with live, unscripted video from our Silicon Valley studio and globe-trotting video teams at theCUBE — take a lot of hard work, time and money. Keeping the quality high requires the support of sponsors who are aligned with our vision of ad-free journalism content.

If you like the reporting, video interviews and other ad-free content here, please take a moment to check out a sample of the video content supported by our sponsors, tweet your support, and keep coming back to SiliconANGLE.