Advertising

The future of Twitter – crushing the ecosystem?

April 12, 2010 By Dan Thornton

Things are definitely coming to a head when it comes to Twitter. The official Twitter conference, ‘Chirp’, takes place on Wednesday, April 14th, and with Evan Williams speaking about the ‘Monetisation Philosophy’, followed by Dick Costolo on ‘Monetisation’, it looks like the Twitter ad platform will arrive after much speculation.

Then there’s the post by Fred Wilson, a significant Twitter investor, about the role of developers, and the fact that the days of ‘hole filling’ by producing something simple which makes up for a gap in the original service have gone.

Then came the purchase on Friday of one-man Twitter client Tweetie, and the news that the $2.99 app would soon be rebranded ‘Twitter for iPhone’ and become a free application.

That’s not forgetting the officially-endorsed Twitter client for BlackBerry, which has since apparently had the ‘official’ term changed. Although there’s no word on what that means for Tweetie.

And the news that Twitter has created a second portal site – following on from Twitter‘s Business portal, there’s now also a Twitter Media.

So in the space of a week:

Third party advertising on Twitter could be hit in a major way.
Clients on iPhone and BlackBerry could be hit in a major way
‘Simple’ apps will probably read into what’s happening that they could be hit next in a major way
Blogs and Twitter-based websites are starting to find that Twitter is creating portals (blogs!) which serve their business, but could also hit other sites by removing valuable content areas.

Sheesh…

There’s definitely a slight feeling of worry at the moment, whether light-hearted or more nervous, as various people wait to see what comes next.

Will Twitter continue to expand into the space formerly occupied by the vibrant Twitter ecosystem? And if so, will there be any self-imposed limit? Or should every Twitter app developer be looking to see whether they’re likely to be acquired (Not exactly a bad exit), or possibly made redundant by the Twitter expansion?

In all honesty, I’m not sure anyone knows, even at Twitter. Contrary to popular rumour, there is money coming into the company via search deals made with Google and Bing, so there hasn’t been a rush to expand and monetise. And there’s a logical point that new Twitter users without access to a mobile client may get extremely confused when presented with the huge choice available, particularly on iPhone.

There’s not much of a precedent set by previous companies either, with Blogger not being known as an app-fest in the same manner as Twitter before Google acquired it.

It seems there are still a few options for developers:

1. Develop something totally amazing, and Twitter may acquire you.

2. Develop something totally amazing which stretches across platform (That’ll be Facebook then).

3. Develop something totally amazing for another platform – one which might not be as noteworthy in the media, but might still be a way to make a decent living – for inspiration, look at developers creating businesses developing for Symbian, or even Palm, alongside iPhone, Android and BlackBerry.

And the same principle of value applies to blogging about Twitter – the likes of oneforty.com provide Twitter client/tool recommendations which have powered the readership of a number of sites, and many of the others exist on a steady diet of ‘Twitter for beginners’, ‘Twitter for Moms’, ‘Twitter for journalists who may freelance two days a week but spend the rest of the time working for a regional paper and also enjoy bowling’ type guides. (Yes, I’m talking about Twitip.com – fair play to them for having a far bigger readership than 140char, but it’s not my favourite ‘other’ blog about Twitter. If you’re going to be polygamous with your microblogging blogs, I’d probably pick Twittercism first.

So it appears as if the era of microblogging consolidation has matured – just as forum software, blogging platforms, and social networks before it (Remember when there was more than Facebook, Myspace, and er….er…)

It doesn’t preclude one-man garage developer or lone-blogger success, but it does make it tougher, with a need to find the right product, get it out there hard and fast, and keep iterating it to stay ahead. There’ll be less novelty and lightweight applications aiming to make a couple of bucks, and more investment by brands and companies in specific advertising and application tied to their ROI. Essentially this kind of hybrid Proprietary meets Open Source model has swung slightly more towards Proprietary, as it did for Microsoft in the past, and as it’s done for Facebook more recently. The question is whether there’s enough gold in Twitter left for 3rd parties to mine, or whether we could see the start of a significant move to other platforms – particularly with the huge rise of interest in mobile internet of all shapes, sizes and applications.

So where do you think Twitter is heading next? And if you’re a developer, what are your plans?

Sun viral video started with Twitter paid advertising

December 1, 2009 By Dan Thornton

UK newspaper The Sun is getting plenty of online coverage for a viral video it has created to capitalise on the interest in Apple’s rumoured tablet computer. But what noone has mentioned is that the seeding started with paid Twitter advertising from Be A Magpie (referral link)…

And I know that because I’ve been running paid Twitter advertising for a while as a test, and spotted it in my approval queue early yesterday, which then got picked up first by Paid Content UK.

Searching Twitter for the bit.ly link shows that 4 other people are using Magpie and beat me to place the advert, as they all used the same text, same ‘ad:’ disclosure, and all posted via the API. And then the link started to take off around 22 hours ago, coinciding with it starting to appear on more and more websites and blogs.

Partly this is down to the advert itself being worthy of comment/repeating. See it for yourself:

But it’s also interesting that The Sun (Or whichever agency/affiliate placed the Magpie advert) is now using paid Twitter advertising – previously the majority of all advertising has been for technology products (with one charity popping up as a one-off).

You can see it’s got around 1457 total clicks today by appending the identifier on the bit.ly url on your own bit.ly info page. And considering the going rate of paid Twitter advertising at the moment, I’d love to know exactly what they’ve paid, but I’d assume it’s been pretty cost effective judging by the prices I’ve seen, and the fact it got picked up by websites following on from the tweets.

The question is whether this was sanctioned by The Sun itself, and whether we’ll see more and more mainstream brands starting to use paid Twitter adverts in addition/instead of using their own accounts or trying to earn Twitter mentions?

In The Sun’s case it definitely makes sense, as their accounts are RSS feeds with less followers than my individual account! e.g. The Sun News, The Sun Bizarre, The Sun Football.

Ad.ly targets celebs with the same old sponsored Tweet model

September 22, 2009 By Dan Thornton

Ad.ly is a self-serve Twitter advertising network matching advertisers and celebrities to tweet about products. The celeb gets to approve or decline messages, and advertisers get tracking for click-through rates, retweets and geographic locations for Retweeters. The celebs set their own price, but Ad.ly gives suggestions, and the celebrity has to tweet four times in the course of a week, netting them five figure sums for each message if they have more than a millions followers.

So that’s Magpie or Izea Sponsored Tweets system just with only celebrities. And apparently that’s enough to have attracted Kim Kardashian, Brooke Burke, Nicole Richie, Brody Jenner, Dr. Drew and Samantha Ronson for the launch.

It’s potentially a good move to only have celebrities involved – that way you only go for the big ticket advertising to generate the share for Ad.ly. But it’s not exactly an evolution of monetising Twitter for individuals.

I’m not going to rant about sponsored tweets as having tested them, I’ve continued to use Magpie on the odd occasion – within a few days each year it effectively pays for my hosting costs, and with a young family and little time to monetise Twitter in other ways, I can just about justify it to myself.

But surely celebrities actually have far more to lose? And less to gain considering the myriad ways which they can effectively monetise their followers and fans through their products? Particularly the hypothetical example Ad.ly is using

BMW’s new ‘Joy’ ad doesn’t have that effect on me…

August 26, 2009 By Dan Thornton

I’ve always been a big fan of cars and motorcycles, coming in somewhere on the Steve McQueen/Jeremy Clarkson end of the spectrum, and I’ve liked a lot of BMW’s.

But their latest ad just really doesn’t work for me:

The problem is that it’s mixing two things badly, and comes across as incredibly patronising: ‘at BMW we make Joy’. No you don’t – you make cars and motorcycles which can evoke feelings of anything from happiness to sadness depending on the person, the situation and millions of other factors. I’ll choose whether I feel joy when someone in a BMW repmobile cuts me up.

And showing people enjoying your product only works if they are real people, and look like real people. I don’t share a lot of emotions with a hired actor from LA being towed in a car on the back of a truck for a morning.

Compare it with a car advert I love:

Now this inspires me to feel joy, because they let me recognise the icons I identify with from their range, the song is about chasing an impossible dream rather than assuming they’ve achieved it, and because their main character is a balding, mutton-chopped 70’s loon, rather than a perfectly groomed extra.