The future of Twitter – crushing the ecosystem?

April 12, 2010 By 2 Comments

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.

image

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?

Filed Under: twitter Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

New reputable way to make money by blogging

March 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Sponsored Post

It seems like a lot of schemes offer ways for bloggers to earn money. But most of them don’t work unless you’re attracting huge traffic numbers. Monetisation often means having a few ad networks scattered around your site, rather than doing something more meaningful.

The good news is that Ebuzzing is a platform to bring together advertisers and bloggers – and having launched in 2007 to a predominantly French market, it’s now available in the UK, allowing you to serve advertiser campaigns either via a dedicated video player, syndicated video players and banners, or by allowing sponsored posts about brands and services. It’s also quick and easy to register on ebuzzing.com

Ebuzzing video campaign with the dedicated player

I’ve actually used the service already, resulting in a post on the Small Rivers blog network tool. Importantly you can choose whether or not a campaign is suitable, and apply or decline on a topic basis, so you don’t have to cover anything your readers would find odd.

Equally importantly it’s an ethical platform, requiring the “sponsored post” disclaimer for all articles, advertiser names alongside all videos, and all links are ‘no follow’ links to avoid being mistaken for paid links – not only do you submit your article for approval, but they’ll also check it’s appearing correctly when it’s published on your site. And more than 600 brands have proposed campaigns so far..

Ebuzzing video campaign with the syndicated player

The financial rewards are at a good level, and registration is quick and simple – and there’s no obligation to post anything if you don’t find a suitable topic – you can also set your own price. Plus it was recently acquired by the WIKIO group, so there’s enough backing to know it shouldn’t disappear overnight. Take a look at ebuzzing and see what you think.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , , ,

Sun viral video started with Twitter paid advertising

December 1, 2009 By 1 Comment

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.

The Sun's paid Twitter advert in my stream

The Sun's paid Twitter advert in my stream

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.

Filed Under: twitter Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

New research states the obvious for advertising on social networks

September 28, 2009 By Leave a Comment

In a shocking revelation, research has revealed that adverts running on non-social media sites get better click-through rates than on sites such as Bebo and Flixter.

Via Brand Republic, social advertising network Lotame compared figures with Google’s Doubleclick – although interaction with ‘advertising communication’ was higher on social networks.

There are a stack of reasons why this is the case – the fact that conversion rates and click-throughs can be monumentally different due to designs, ad placement and topics means that these types of comparison are never particularly useful.

But the main one is that when I want to communicate with my friends and family, I don’t give a monkeys about any product unless I’m actively asking about it, or my network are actively recommending it.

When I’m viewing non-social sites, I’m more likely to be possibly searching for something related to my browsing.

If you’re monetising something via social networking, surely the best way is to remove advertising, and just go straight from recommendation to purchase?

Filed Under: Advertising Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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