CNN recently published an article, Twitter Business Model Found!, about Twitters business model a.k.a. money making scheme. Twitter as like many of the other well-known web 2.0 technologies offers useful capabilities people can use to follow each other. But in order to stay in business, these companies need to also make money to survive. Facebook is another example of a company that is struggling to make a profit regardless of being the number one web 2.0 technology today.

As one profit earning tactic, twitter has a list of the most “Suggested Follows”. You can imagine, that being on this list offers one very high visibility and reach within the community. Jason Calacanis recently offered Twitter $250,000 to be on of the 20 users in this list. You may ask who is Jason Calacanis? I did not know myself..so I looked him up. Jason Calacanis owned on of the first dot-com companies in New York City. He is also know to be one of the fist to capitalize on the growth of blogs before selling to AOL. He is a well known Internet entrepreneur and is someone who people would probably actually like to follow. This, having him be a part of the People to follow lists makes sense.

So the question I ask is, what do you think about being able to buy yourself a spot on the “Suggested Follows” list or any other list for that matter, that makes them highly visible? For example, if twitter was surrounded around audio devices for the home, is it fair that the companies with the most money can just buy themselves onto the list? Would it be fair if customers actually rated potentials companies to follow? I guess what I am getting at is that some other factor used in conjunction with money may be beneficial when trying to make a list like this. This way the originating company makes money but the users also have input to these lists which only validates the offer as well.

I understand that these new web 2.0 companies need to make a profit to survive, its not just all about the user. But these companies need to pay attention to their customer base and their best interest as well. I guess this is why Facebook is having such a challenge as well. Mere advertising does not cut it these days but I am sure that with a little more thought, profit is inevitable. Just a thought.