Twitter Business Model

The other day Sarah Silverman tweeted a somewhat vulgar complaint about American Airlines.  I'd post it here but it looks like she deleted it from her Twitter account. Her complaint regarded a connecting flight that was cancelled after a 7 hour layover.

Following her tweet, a short discussion ensued between Sarah and her followers about the poor service they've experienced from American Airlines.

As of today, Sarah has 1,692,580 followers.  To give you a sense of her reach, that's approximately the same number of people that will see this 17,000 square foot Walgreen's billboard that rises 340 feet above Times Square in a 24 hour period.

Imagine someone posting a complaint about your company on this billboard?  The damage that can come to American Airlines and other consumer businesses from Twitter is significant.

I know several companies (particularly airlines) are already using Twitter to communicate with frustrated customers.  I believe there’s a huge B2B revenue opportunity here for Twitter.

If I was American Airlines, I'd pay a lot for a Twitter application that would integrate into my CRM or customer service software where I could view all of my @mentions sorted by the number of people that follow the Tweeter.  If American Airlines is able to turn Sarah into a happy customer and can get a positive Tweet from her, they’ll get 17,000 square feet of Times Square advertising for $0.  A pretty good investment to make in one customer.

I have no idea if Twitter is already doing this or if they're considering B2B CRM as a future revenue stream.  But it seems to me that there'd  be a significant revenue opportunity if Twitter was able to effectively integrate their reach, data and users into a company's CRM systems and process.