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.
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
“We will look back to 2008 and think it archaic and quaint that we had to go to a destination like Facebook or LinkedIn to be social,” says Charlene Li at Forrester Research, a consultancy. Future social networks, she thinks, “will be like air. They will be anywhere and everywhere we need and want them to be.” - The Economist
As much as I’m a marketer and would love to believe this, I think it’s just flat inaccurate.
This prediction completely discounts the fact that part of what makes the Internet the Internet, is because of commerce. Commerce exists by the nature of creating significant value to others.
Because of this, there will always be newer networks with newer technologies. Newer networks with different demographics. Newer networks with varying costs (not just currency) to participate.
Whenever I see claims like this, I come back to other functions that exist due to the fundamentally social nature of humans: BBS systems and message boards. While certainly widespread, they are separate and distinct in their own markets. You do not see my message board posts on Yahoo!’s customizable home page.
Will there be aggregators, such as with RSS and e-mail? Absolutely. But they will be separate functions and networks of their own.
Is it archaic that we go to coffee shops to be social, when we can make coffee or hang out with others in our own homes? What about going to restaurants to eat food, when we can eat in our own homes?
The reality is that a portal exists because people want disparate information aggregated. A social network exists because people want to socialize online. Search engines exist because people want to find things more easily.
There’s a reason why Starbucks isn’t known for their dinner meals.
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.
Thursday, November 2nd, 2006
Mashable.com notes a report by eMarketer that predicts advertising spends on social networks have been consistently beating estimates and are on track to reach $2 billion by 2010.
“U.S. marketers are expected to spend $350 million in 2006, an increase of 25% over previous estimates. Estimates for 2010 are also up 16 percent to $2.2 billion, with social network ad spending projected to account for 8.5% of the U.S. ad market by 2010.”
Tuesday, October 31st, 2006
The longest-lasting online resource that I’ve come across for the nitty gritty of online marketing and business, WebmasterWorld.com, has just had a post on the front page of their site titled: No Need For Google, Myspace Works For Me.
It is in their subscriber’s section, so if you’re not a paying member, you won’t be able to access it. But, the discussion is a great example of how Social Media is being noticed at all levels as a potential avenue for marketing a product, service or business.
Here, “carlr,” outlines the success that he has had as a photographer through his MySpace profile, especially as compared to the success he has seen from Google.
“My commercial photography website has been launched over a year ago.. PR4 now and about 100 on-theme inbound links and no outbound links. Still sandboxed so i get 4-5 hits per day from Google - a joke. Oh well. I signed up at MySpace with a custom template with portfolio etc. It’s been a month only and got many calls from clients, a major magazine and i even unexpectedly met somebody for real in a bar.. “hey! by any chance.. are you …?”
In this age where we must as webmasters wait and pray to get a decent position in google before we get out of business, this is refreshing. Maybe some of you guys should have a look.”
The entire discussion is definitely worth a read for those of you who are paid subscribers. And for those of you who are not, I highly recommend that you consider paying for membership here. As someone who runs a website with a community of members over 60,000 members large, I can truly say that this is one of the best online communities out there.
I’ll also be at PubCon for those that might want to meet up - I’d love to talk to anyone and everyone who has seen success or failure from their Social Media Marketing campaigns.
Monday, October 30th, 2006
I remember coming across Fred Stutzman’s blog a few months ago and being amazingly impressed with the quality of his writing, his choice of language and the structure to his ideas.
I a recent post, he discusses considerations for Social Networks to monetize their offerings.
- Exogenous or alternative markets
- Brokering of trust
- The negotiation of community
For those who know me, know that authentic Trust is something something to constantly be striven for and never (if possible) compromised. Therefore, the idea of brokering trust is one I would definitely be interested in understanding better.
Obviously, nothing can replicate the trust that is built (or broker) through a shared experience, but I would certainly be interested in hearing how Fred would represent trust. If that can be accomplished (it has forever been, and will eternally be, an issue with Search), then it would be interested to see the value that would be placed on it by members of social networks.
It would also be interesting to see how the algorithms to measure and calculate representations of trust compared to that of search engines.
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