The Emergence of Twitvertising

By Mark Evans in Advertising/Marketing, Social Media 4 Comments Tags: , , ,

Here’s the thing about Twitter: it has huge potential to become a lucrative advertising platform – something that Twitter has continually resisted, although its resolve may be weakening (or disappearing) based on recent comments by COO Dick Costelo.

There’s a great story in today’s New York Times about how advertising networks such as ad.ly and Ted (Pay Per Post) Murphy’s Izea are doing gangbusters by getting popular Twitter users such as John Chow to insert affiliate links into their Twitter feeds. Chow made $3,000 in October by simply posting these kind of links.

While Twitter has taken the stance that advertising would ruin the experience, the fact is relevant and contextual advertising could be a massive business. So while Twitter sits on the sidelines (until, apparently, next year), a growing number of entrepreneurs are moving into the Twitvertising market with no qualms or concerns about sullying the ecosystem.

You have to wonder what Twitter thinks of all this activity given it’s still scrambling to create a business model to justify more than $100-million in venture capital. As Google has illustrated, relevant advertising works: consumers like it because it meets their needs and interests, while advertisers like it because its targeted and measurable.

While there be huge concerns about spam, the great thing for Twitter users is they can quickly unfollow anyone who they believe is spamming them or sending them too many affiliate links. And if the advertising networks are smart, they will lean towards disclosure so that Twitter users receive some warning about the existence of ads.

As Twitter evolves, there’s no doubt advertising is going to be a growing part of the mix. Before it explodes, Twitter would be wise to lay out the ground rules of what’s acceptable. This isn’t suggest that these rules will be respected but at least Twitter will have made an effort to control the beast before it escapes out of the cage.

Would you be open to ads on Twitter? If so, how much advertising would you see as acceptable?

More: Robert Scoble has some thoughts about the emergence of Twitvertising, including his decision to sign up for ad.ly. I suspect the number of ad.ly members will be see strong growth over the next little while.

The Decline of Twitter.com; Not Twitter

By Mark Evans in Social Media 10 Comments Tags: , , , ,

cinderellaFor many people, Twitter is like Cinderella – the belle of the ball who will suddenly become a servant-girl again at the stroke of midnight. It explains why there’s a steady flow of reports that Twitter has plateaued or that Twitter is in decline whenever a report from Nielsen, comScore or Compete is published.

The latest “Cinderella” story comes from eMarketer, which breathlessly asks “Tweeting No More?” based on a 27.8% decline in unique visitors to Twitter.com in October, compared with September. While that number is large, there are likely several reasons to explain some or most of the decline.

The most obvious is the growing popularity of non-Twitter.com services and applications such as Tweetdeck, Seesmic, HootSuite, CoTweet, Thwirl, Tweetie, Twitterrific, Brizzly and SplitTweet. While Twitter has dabbled in making changes to Twitter.com, external developers are raced ahead with much better products that come with more useful and compelling bells and whistles.

For many people, Twitter.com is like a bike with training wheels. Once they have the hang of Twitter, many people move on to something else. While Twitter.com has added some new wrinkles recently such as Lists, it’s simply not good enough to maintain its place as the place where active Twitter users hang out.

In many respects, this is another one of those Twitter head-scratchers: the willingness to let others be innovative and, in the process, poach traffic coming to Twitter.com. Why, for example, has Twitter not used any of its venture capital booty to create an AIR application to compete with Tweetdeck or Seesmic. Where’s the ability to manage multiple accounts to compete against CoTweet or SplitTweet? Where’s the super-cool wireless application to battle Twitterrific? For all the talk about Twitter monetizing itself with ads, traffic to monetize those ads is slipping away.

Another interesting consideration is that according to a recent study by Sysomos (a client), Twitter.com’s market share has stayed flat over the past five months at about 46%.

So, how do you correlate flat market share with declining traffic?

Maybe it has to do with the data being crunched. Given the large ecosystem and the different ways people are using Twitter, it may be that getting view of the TwitterSphere is difficult, if not impossible. For all we know, the data collected by Nielsen, comScore and Compete may be inaccurate….or not.

108617

106719

Sysomos: The Right Place at the Right Time

By Mark Evans in Social Media No Comments Tags: , , , ,

Having been involved in three start-ups, one of the must-have elements is simply having the right product at the right time. When I co-founded Blanketware in 2001, we were focused on providing natural language search so people could find and use online services. Unfortunately, the Web 2.0 revolution hadn’t happened yet so Blanketware was hurt by being ahead of its time.

A stark contrast is Sysomos (a client), which is now thriving with its social media monitoring and analytics services – Heartbeat and MAP. Not only is the company’s technology best-of-class but, as important, Sysomos is playing is a market in which there is huge demand from companies looking for insight and intelligence about the social media landscape.

It’s really exciting to be working with a start-up in the eye of the hurricane. There is tremendous interest in Sysomos’ services from companies around world. In the past year, it has attracted clients such as Roche, Shell Oil, Hill & Knowlton, Ketchum and Sony Ericsson.

While I’m obviously biased, Sysomos is one of Canada’s biggest high-tech success stories. The company, which spent three years developing its technology, has quickly become a fast-growing business, which is something that happens to a small group of start-ups.

Today, Sysomos unveiled a new version of its Heartbeat social media monitoring and measurement service, and it now includes Facebook integration. It’s a major step forward for a service that already had major traction. For anyone not aware of Heartbeat, here’s a short video.


For more on Sysomos and its services, check out this blog post by Jason Falls.


The Recession’s Over….I Think

By Mark Evans in Advertising/Marketing 3 Comments Tags: , , ,

It goes without saying that things have been pretty grim economically over the past year – millions of people have been laid off or restructured, while consumer spending has plummeted as people decide to hold off purchases after a decade-long shopping spree.

But there appears to be a few signs the recession is starting to disappear.

One indication is the re-emergence of demo opportunities. Over the past few months, I’ve been lucky to have been given the opportunity to evaluate a lot of new products and services. Some of this activity may have to do with the fact companies and PR firms are paying more attention to bloggers, but I think it also has to do with marketing budgets being expanded after nearly disappearing for the past year.

Another sign is the return of the holiday party. Last year, most holiday parties were abruptly canceled because no one wanted to be seen as being ostentatious at a time when people were losing their jobs. The parties that happened were low-key affairs with many of the frills taken out of the mix.

Recently, however, I’ve received invitations to several holiday parties. It may be that companies are feeling more optimistic or perhaps the doom and gloom that dominated the holiday season last year no longer exists. Nevertheless, it looks like the holiday party season is alive and well.

And it may just be that these are signs the recessions is starting to go away, if ever so slowly.

What do you think?

Apparently, People Will Pay for Online Content

By Mark Evans in Media 2 Comments Tags: , , , ,

There’s a lot of chatter about a Forrester Research report suggesting that 80% of Internet users in North America won’t pay for online newspaper and magazine content. This bolsters the contention that pay-to-play within the online content world is a non-starter.

But what if you flip the Forrester report upside down, and consider the fact 20% of North American Internet users are willing to pay for content. That’s a fairly encouraging number in the wake of the widespread belief that online content should be free.

The obvious question is what kind of content will people pay to read. My sense is that high-profile brands such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, Wall St. Journal, the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, et al could attract a significant number of customers because their content is deemed to have value – and not seen as a commodity.

Personally, I’d pay $5 or $10 a month to have full access – Web, mobile – to the New York Times. Heck, I’d probably pay $5/month just to read the New York Times Sunday Magazine.

Maybe my belief in the viability of the pay wall is off the mark but I do believe there is content worth paying to access, and I believe there are many people willing to pay for it.

For more, check out this blog post on ReadWriteWeb by Frederic Lardinois.


Social Media is Not for Everyone

By Mark Evans in Social Media 2 Comments Tags: , , ,

With all the talk about social media, including growing signs there’s growing corporate interest, in climbing on the bandwagon, a question that begs to be asked is whether there are companies that shouldn’t bother with social media.

While it makes complete sense for companies that sell to companies to embrace social media, what about companies that operate behind the scenes? Is social media a good idea within the B2B market? Should the hardware store down the street from my house be on Twitter or have a Facebook Page?

For many companies, social media is a waste of time. The size of the potential audience they want to reach, or the way their customers consume information makes social media a non-starter. Why bother investing time and energy to do something that none of your customers are interested in?

I realize this sounds like heresy given the hype surrounding social media as a “magic bullet” but social media is not a one-size-fits-all kind of activity. For the same reasons that radio ads don’t work for everyone, the same goes for social media.

For thoughts on the non-use of social media, check out this post by Our Social Times. And for those you working for a consumer-facing company, here’s a video by Socialnomics on why you should be all over social media:



Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
1 2 3 4 5