Digital Marketing and Technological Insight

I have been talking about Twitter and other micro-blogging services for a couple years now - the discussion of Twitter monetization has gone for almost as long.  The buzz  Twitter gets is always at a fevered pitch but recently it has been even higher with the “talks” of a Google acquisition. With all the hype and hoopla going around a few interesting discussions have been taking place about what a Twitter brought to you by Google would look like. Outside of integrating GMail, Google Docs, Picasa and other Google services the real interesting potential would be adding AdWords Contextual targeting.

Personally I would hope that either Twitter itself or whomever bought it would not ruin the user-experience by placing ads on either the profile pages or tweet streams. However, what about Twitter search? Think about it for a second - advertisers could target real-time conversations through the existing AdWords (or similar) platform. Check out my mock-up below: people are tweeting about SXSW in Texas…ads for Texas travel deals show up on the side. Sounds like a home run to me…plus Twitter doesn’t need to be bought by Google to do this - a nice rev-share agreement would do just fine.

It should come to no shock to many of you that I am, and have been, a huge fan of Twitter since I first created my @khawe account in the spring of 2007. Over the 2 years I have been on Twitter I have tried just about every Twitter tool out there, over time I have settled on certain ones that are either the best for what I need or I am just comfortable using.

Here is a summary of all of the current Twitter tools I prefer to use through out my day.

• iPhone: When i first got my iPhone I started using Twitterrific, but slowly became annoyed with its UX and functionality. I tried a couple of other apps but eventually settled on TwitterFon - which I have been using ever since.
• BlackBerry: Since I have an iPhone the need to use my BlackBerry on a regular basis has diminished. However, the only app I have used - and would recommend - is TwitterBerry.
• Desktop Client: I was a big fan of Twirl for a long time but eventually moved on to TweetDeck. TweetDeck has been fairly stable for me since I started using it, plus the grouping of friends and UI really can’t be beat.
• URL Shortener: You can’t use Twitter on a regular basis and not have a preferred URL shortener - mine is Bit.ly. Bit.ly provides the basic functionality you need but with click tracking, great tool to see which of your tweets people are actually interested in.
• Twitter Management: Since I have multiple Twitter accounts (personal, professional, etc) I use SplitTweet to manage them all - great tool to send out one Tweet to any / all accounts without logging into each one separately.
• Page Tweet: Say you are reading something on a website that you feel your Twitter audience would appreciate / like, instead of copying the URL and title of the article I use TwitThis to automatically share the contents with my followers.
• Wordpress Plugin: I have used just about every Twitter WordPress plugin out there and have had some issue or another with all of them. The Twitter Tools plugin isn’t perfect but it does what I need (auto post to Twitter blog posts and pull in Twitter feeds) and is fairly stable.

I am sure there are better Twitter tools out there, but these are the ones that work best for me. How do you use Twitter? What tools do you prefer and why?

Dont forget to follow me @khawe on Twitter.

In what was no shock to anyone, Twitter officially announced their purchase of search engine Summize for roughly a few million in cash and Twitter stock (hearing different numbers from different sources). Rumors of the purchase have been floating around the internet for over a week now and most people were just waiting for the official announcement. Today we saw what was once Summize.com now direct you to Twitter Search (Search.Twitter.com),which is the same Summize user-interface but with Twitter branding.

Summize was always the best Twitter search application around, I regularly used it to not only monitor specific keywords but my own name. Summize gained a great deal of traction and traffic when Twitter was having their technical issues the past couple of months. Twitter users flocked to Summize and other search services to make sure they caught all of their @replies and friends messages. I, like many others, never stopped using it once Twitter (sort of) got their act together.

On the surface the purchase of Summize drastically improves the internal search functionality of Twitter. But, as I have discussed in previous Twitter Monetization posts, this acquisition is another step in bringing in actual revenue. How? First, they can sell ads on the Twitter Search results pages. This is the easiest and most logical immediate step as everyone would be up in arms over any sort of advertisements within the main Twitter interface and Tweets. Secondly, Twitter can license out the Summize API to other micro-blogging / Web 2.0 services to power their own internal site-search, in this scenario they can either get paid for the use or have a rev-share deal in place.

The great thing about this deal is that it is a win-win for Twitter. They have improved the user-experience, brought in some top engineers and maybe created a much needed revenue model.

Now if only they can get rid of the “Fail Whale”…

Is there a day that goes by where some new micro-blogging “Twitter Killer” isn’t launched? Jaiku, Pownce, Plurk, FriendFeed…the list goes on and on. Each comes out the gate promising to be the next big thing and outside of a few earlier adopters they usually fizzle into social media purgatory - some good user numbers but nothing to get that excited over.

The latest entry into the micro-blogging field is Identi.ca and the buzz around them is of course very loud. So what is the big deal? Well, first they copy the Twitter minimalist approach in terms of user-experience. They avoid cluttering the site with other features / content and stay away from displaying content in a new way (e.g. Plurk) - Identi.ca sticks to the basics. However, the key differentiation is that while other micro-blogging services are looking to capitalize on Twitters technical issues (Fail Whale anyone?) Identi.ca actually tries to solve it. Identi.ca has made its code open-sourced and encourages users to host Identi.ca on their own servers - this approach would distribute the load if the service became extremely popular and theoretically avoid the downtime that plagues Twitter.

So why wont Identi.ca, or any other micro-blogging service, take down Twitter? The answer is simple, long-term user adoption. There is a difference between just signing up & updating a few times and actually contributing on a regular basis. For micro-blogging the power is in the conversation and right now Twitter wins hands-down. During Twitters technical issues, where it seemed like it was down more than it was up, many people tried out other services, however the majority of users have always come back to Twitter in some capacity. It is true that some other services, like FriendFeed, have better features but if you look at the traffic (see graph below) Twitter has too big of a head start in terms of users and conversations. Any other micro-blogging service who launches is automacially put behing the 8-ball and must play serious catch-up and face, in my opinion, insurmountable odds.

Right now, FriendFeed is probably the biggest Twitter competitor in terms of functionality and industry buzz.  All of the big social media players are users and some (like Jason Calacanis) have become fans and have threatened to start migrating all of their conversations to FriendFeed and away from Twitter. However, the success of a micro-blogging service has to do more than just having Calacanis, Arrington, Scoble, Israel, etc, use it - I already read their blogs and subsribe to their feeds so really how is that providing new content discovery? It isnt.

On top of users and conversations, Twitter also has two other areas where they are killing the competition: their API and mobile strategy. Just about every Web 2.0 service offers their API’s - Twitter is no different. However, because of the volume of traffic Twitter generates, numerous third-party developers have built applications that truly enhance the Twitter experience - Summize, Twellow, TwitterVision, Twirl, the list goes on and on. Granted every other micro-blogging service can replicate each of these applications, but again it comes down to users and Twitter just blows everyone else away.  In regards to mobile, Twitter has gotten this right from day one. Micro-blogging is about sending quick updates and the ability to do that from your mobile phone via text message or applications (e.g. TwitterBerry) adds another layer of ease to the conversation.

At the end of the day micro-blogging comes down to two things - users and conversations, and you cant have one without the other. Twitter has both. Twitter does need to overcome its technical hurdles and there are definite improvements to be made to the user-interface but in the end Twitter is the only micro-blogging service that doesnt have to be perfect to succeed.

As we all know Twitter is one of my favorite topics to talk about. This weekend I actually had a chance to talk with a friend of mine who works for a competing micro-blogging service on the future of this niche area as well as what lies ahead for Twitter. I can’t name what company he works for but let me just say if you are a heavy user of Twitter you probably use his service as well.

Think Twitter and other micro-blogging services like Pownce, Plurk and Jaiku are not forces to be reckoned with? Twitter had close to 15 million visits last month with 15% growth. Impressive stats for any website let alone one that hasn’t been out of Beta for very long. Also, think about the amount of time a visitor spends engaged with Twitter via the web, desktop applications and mobile applications. I couldn’t find exact stats on this metric but I am sure it is impressive to say the least. Either way you look at it, Twitter and Twitter like services are here to stay.

For those of you even somewhat familiar with Twitter, you know that their biggest challenge lies in fixing the technical issues that have caused its not-so-recent downtime and performance issues. But, let us assume for a moment that the good people behind Twitter fix everything and from now on it runs smoothly. Great, now what? Twitter’s challenges are just beginning, they now have two major hurdles ahead of them: growth and monetization. Two challenges that every Web 2.0 type web service are grappling with and are not solved very easily. However, I do believe that Twitter is in a unique position to overcome these challenges by leveraging its existing user base, allowing micro-blogging to become truly mainstream and building itself into more of a true social destination as opposed to an outlet for the tech savvy.

I think everyone can agree that the obvious path to meeting all of the challenges I listed would be to have micro-blogging go mainstream. But how does one go mainstream? Then once you are mainstream how do you monetize the traffic? Going mainstream is not as easy as one might think, the web is littered with thousands of websites and web services that failed to become even marginally popular let alone hit the social mainstream. With that, based on what was discussed this past weekend here is a quick outline of what I think Twitter could do to take their service and business to the next level.

• First, don’t mess with the main Twitter interface - let the micro-blogging / Tweets remain the core focus of the website. In order to create a successful (and profitable) web business you have to do two things: 1)do something different or 2) do something better. Since micro-blogging is still in its infancy Twitter accomplishes both of these right now - no need to fix what isn’t broken (not counting the downtime of course).
• Secondly, blow out the social aspects of Twitter, let users create full profiles that they are used to seeing on other social networking type websites. Don’t overdo it but make it so it becomes an extension of the micro-blogging. For example, show most popular tweets, expanded groups (which Twitter mentioned was in the works), have better location / photo integration, create a private twittering section…seriously the list goes on and on.
• Also, it has to be mentioned…since the technical issues will always be in the back of peoples minds, make sure to setup the infrastructure in a way that wont affect the main service. For example, Twitter.com/khawe would stay as the twitter hub while the social networking component lives on a sub-domain (e.g. khawe.Twitter.com). Creating a separate infrastructure allows for the best of both worlds, without effecting the performance of either.
• Now of course, how do you monetize such a “soon to be” mainstream web service? First and foremost let me make it clear that I do not recommend monetization the main Twitter value - the Twitter / Tweet page. Serving ads on top of the Twittering will negatively impact the user experience and the overall micro-blogging experience. However, if you do have to monetize the the main Twitter interface I would do it via overall page sponsorship…change a background, add a ’sponsored by” type ad, but nothing that becomes to intrusive or extreme. The main source of revenue would come from the deeper, social, part of the website that contains more static content that Twitter can sell ads against in the traditional CPM model.
• Lastly, You can (but I don’t recommend) create a Twitter premium option - like Pownce Pro - but how much will that really bring? Not a big fan but it is an option so I thought I would at least mention it.

Bottom line is that by creating a social network behind the micro-blogging instant communication functionality allows for a more in-depth and sticky user experience. What more can you ask for?

Ok, that is enough about Twitter for now…are you on Twitter? Be sure to follow me at Twitter.com/khawe