Monday, May 12th, 2008
When I try and explain what Twitter is to people, a blank stare usually follows. Next is: So how do they make money?
The best response that I can come up with (ie: it ends that thread of the conversation) is that it’s a proof of concept and that they’re still trying to figure out their model and their users are still trying to figure out the value offering.
I keep seeing the value proposition of Twitter coming up here and there.
At Blog Carolinas, Andy Beal gave a great example of how a family could use a private account to send text messages to everyone at once with updates/questions like “I’m at the grocery store. Does anyone need anything?”
When I was on a road trip last fall, we Twittered (with almost no followers) for recommendations of what to do in Seattle. 20 minutes later, we were told exactly where to go and what places to see. Without that type of connectivity, that night would have been one of the more average nights, rather than one of the craziest nights we had on the entire trip.
BrightKite seems to have potential at giving new value to Twitter’s base functionality. By utilizing text messaging and online messaging at the same time to distribute real-world locations, it’s certain to add a whole new dimension of functionality to Twitter’s offering. I’m already seeing Twitter messages scroll by of random meetups that wouldn’t have happened if BrightKite hadn’t been used. (Speaking of, anyone have an extra invite they want to send my way?)
Today, an earthquake at 7.8 on the Richter Scale hit China and Beijing today, in what has already killed thousands, and is sure to be even more devastating than we currently know. Robert Scoble points out (still waiting on a source for this) that the USGS was three minutes behind the first Twitters of the earthquake, which you can see here.
It will be interesting to see what pieces of the Twitter puzzle get brought together and what comes of it in the next couple of years. It obviously has a significant value proposition. Hopefully, we’ll see a revenue-generating model that suits users, developers, and companies.
Thursday, December 14th, 2006
StumbleVideo launched today and Andy Beal got a first look, digging in with yet another thorough writeup.
With the launch of StumbleVideo, the company is betting that people will enjoy discovering new videos in the very same way, and spend even more time “channel surfing”. “People demand instant access to online video content that’s personally gratifying, and they don’t want to spend all day looking for it. That’s where StumbleUpon fits in,” says Feller. “StumbleVideo allows people to discover great videos they would likely never find using traditional keyword searches. The experience is like channel surfing through video content that is laser-targeted to your tastes.”
And without further ado: First Look: StumbleUpon Announces New Video Surfing Site, StumbleVideo
Friday, November 10th, 2006
Congratulations to Seth Godin on his two 50,000 milestones today: Being able to donate $50,000 earned from high sales of The Big Moo, and Squidoo hitting 50,000 entries.
I highly recommend reading his inspiring and grateful post. It’s proof of yet another way that the principles of Social Media can change the world.
Thursday, November 9th, 2006
I’m not even going to try to out-do the in-depth analysis that Hitwise has done in their Consumer Generated Media Report.
The report also touches on something I was actually thinking about earlier today: The seasonality of social media.
It has been reported that there was a decline in visits to sites like MySpace and Facebook in September, which is a typical seasonal occurrence as school-aged users shift their attention from socializing online to academic pursuits. Last year, the market share of visits to the top 20 social networking sites decreased by 7.6% from August to September 2005, but recovered in October, increasing by 10.8% from September to October 2005. This year, a similar pattern emerged, with visits to the top 20 social networking sites decreasing by 7.3% from August to September 2006. Category traffic was flat from September to October 2006, indicating a slow down in growth, but by no means a decline.
Certainly very telling of the demographic for consumer-generated media as well as social media.
EDIT: When I was tagging this, I wanted to also tag it in a category that might contain articles that are focused on Wikipedia. Is there a name for sites such as Wikipedia, Digg, etc, where the value of the media comes from social collaboration, rather than individual contribution (blogs, social networks, etc)? I’ve labeled this as “Social Information Media” in the meantime, but was curious if anyone had set out to define what this may be referred to as.
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