Announcing the Create a Twitter Revenue Model Contest

First the good news:

Twitter's traffic is surging -- yesterday, Hitwise announced it passed Digg.
The micro-blogging company finally hired a revenue boss, Kevin Thau, in December.
Twitter cofounder Evan Williams said the company would announce a revenue model sometime in Q1.
As the aftermath of Flight 1549's landing in the Hudson demonstrated, the service continues to edge its way closer to becoming a mainstream method of communication in our culture.

The bad news: The startup makes zero dollars -- still. In this economy -- VC funding is drying up, maybe you've heard -- that means Twitter could shutter as suddenly as it appeared.

Let's finally find away to avoid that fate, shall we?

Following the rousing success of our Fix Digg's Miserable Business contest, we are hereby officially announcing the Create A Twitter Revenue Model contest.

After we decide on a winner, we'll post their plan and resume on Alley Insider. We'll also send both to Twitter cofounder Evan Williams, in an email strongly recommending he hire our winner for the open Business Product Manager gig at Twitter.

We'll post some finalist entries on Alley Insider, too. Winners will also get a Silicon Alley Insider hat. Try to remain calm.

Entrants are required to:

Create a slide show presentation illustrating their plan and product.
Walk us through how a sale would go down.
Say how much revenue their plan would produce after one, five and ten years.
Come up with and answer five FAQs that would challenge their plan.

We expect that the wining entry will present a creative, but plausible plan in language that makes its complicated ideas easy for readers to understand. This winner will probably submit a slide show that features at least one or two mock-ups of the revenue model in action.

Deadline for entry is Wednesday January 28. Plans should be submitted to nicholas@alleyinsider.com.

If you think about it, the Create A Twitter Revenue Model contest is a lot like a soap-box derby, except instead of quaint memories with dad and a gold-plated plastic trophy, our winner will walk away knowing thousands of of Alley Insider readers -- and Twitter's cofounders -- know exactly what kind of genius he or she is.

So hurry up and get working!

Photo:habi

Announcing The Create A Twitter Revenue Model Contest