Turning A Twitter App Into a $40 million Fortune

Hi there I just want to share what I believe is a really inspirational story that caught my eye in a newspaper here in the UK some time back and really just illustrates why being online, using internet and viral marketing and all the hard work we all put in towards  making it online can and is possible but its important to keep the faith and just don’t give up.

True Story I kid you not!

Ok so here goes, the story covered how a very normal, man next door, married, 2 kids in his thirties developed a fairly simple (it appears) piece of software whilst he was out of work that he has just sold to Twitter (yep Twitter no less) for a cool £25 million sterling Ok so that’s over $40 million dollars.

Hey and the real beauty of it is his little company that developed it has only been going 3 years and last year only made just over £10,000 ($16,000). Wow what a payday, is that not totally incredible.

A really simple Idea

Apparently the guy likes to be organised and became frustrated using Twitter and wanted a method of managing his social networking universe. So off he went and developed an app that organises messages from groups of people into columns, so you can keep; in touch with those you want to, and have a separate column of those you might just want to communicate with occasionally  – and that my friends is basically it – how simple is that. Google it  Tweet-Deck, and see for yourself.

Viral marketing – Free Download – was it worth it?

The app a free download has become so popular that over 20 million people have downloaded it and posts from the service account for 10% of Twitter’s messages – can you believe that? It’s just totally amazing.

Now what I’m trying to get across here is that guy didn’t think “Oh I’ll develop some software and then sell it on for mega bucks” No he developed an app to overcome a problem that he found annoying and he probably reckoned others did too – and he was proved totally right.

He’s no Different to You or I is he?

So what he did is not that different to what we do in our own internet marketing and information publishing activities is it – we find a niche, discover through our research that there’s a demand for help, advice and problem solving information and look to satisfy that desire or requirement.

And I bet you that if you spoke to this guy he’d tell you all the usual stories of late nights, early morning s falling asleep at his pc and probably the desire to just chuck it all in and give up. But he obviously remained focused, continued the development of his dream and got it to market. – Where by all accounts its been enthusiastically received.

His viral marketing – giving it away as a free download – brilliant whether he planned it that way or not its worked a treat because the popularity of the app started the process of a rival dot.com company making approaches to him finally attracted Twitter and the rest my friends is as the saying goes ‘history’

So here we have a simple idea that satisfied a need, provided a solution that became a viral marketing success making this chaps, his wife and 2 children financially secure for the rest of their lives – not quite a rags to riches story but pretty close to it!

So the moral is don’t over complicate it, find a niche where people need and are searching for solutions. Provide the answers they need, market to them, keep marketing to them offering quality free stuff (viral marketing) – don’t loose focus and most importantly don’t give up. To your success

Tony

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