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Tuesday
Jul282009

Day 1: Who's so social on social media?

DateTuesday, July 28, 2009 at 12:25PM

Day 1: This is the first day of my month long experiment. I wanted to count yesterday's post as my "day 1" posting, but it would defeat the purpose of the experiment if I was an insincere weasel. So I didn't. Which brings me to today, and the post below about a study released this week that digs in to who is actually using social media.

Twitter followers:92

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Today, Anderson Analytics released a study tracking U.S. user behavior in social networks. The firm surveyed 5,000 users over a span of 11 months, and conducted a 15-minute survey of more than 1,000 users age 13 and older. The results of the study were actually pretty interesting. You can find the whole surveyhere, but below are some of the more interesting points:

 

  1. Users who belong to a social network arefour timesmore vocal about products and services than those who don't.
  2. More than 20% of Twitter users have their own blog, a large portion of which trumpet social causes.
  3. 44% of 35 to 44 year-olds in the U.S. and 30% of 45 to 54-year-olds have profiles on a social network.
  4. More than 50% of U.S. users have associated their profiles with a brand, company or product. This association has been overwhelmingly positive.
  5. The average U.S. user logs into a social network about 4x daily, 5 days a week, for a total of roughly 1 hour per day.

What these points (and the study itself) resound, is the idea that bloggers + social media users are not only active, but they are hugely important for brands. I know that this isn't the most groundbreaking discovery in the history of humanity -- or of this month -- but getting concrete percentage points for activity is radically different than simply saying "Brands should use social media... it's important?"

 

AuthorRobert Boyle | CommentPost a Comment |
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Monday
Jul272009

My Resolution: Do it until my fingers bleed

DateMonday, July 27, 2009 at 11:53AM

The point of starting this blog was to create a portal through which I could write about what I wanted, when I wanted.  My intention was never to develop my own personal brand or become the world's foremost authority on anything.  I just wanted to write.

That said, I am going to use this blog as something a little different for the next month: as my home base in an social media experiment I am undertaking. I am going to dance the social media dance for one month.

 

The breakdown of my experiment:

 

  1. Write an original blog post every day.  Because I still want this to be my safe zone, I will still be writing about the internets and anything else I find interesting.  Once a day though.
  2. Synthesize the 5 most interesting stories of each weekday and put them here.  I have pledged to do this countless times, and have never done so.  I am going to do it now -- GET TO THE CHOPPA.
  3. "Tweet" 10 times a day.  This might not sound like a lot, but I HATE "tweeting" random shit like "just leaving the gym" so this really means finding 10 articles/websites/videos/lovemaking tips that I think are interesting enough to tell people to check out.  See, doesn't that sound more difficult?
  4. Tumblr + Flickr = I am still finding these redundant, it's true.  But I will post 15 times this month.

 

The purpose of this experiment is to find out how much activity it takes to gain followers on twitter.  I am interested in this because so many people on Twitter tout themselves "experts" in social media, but previously had jobs as Northeastern Sales reps for Bally's (just an example -- obviously not everyone on Twitter used to work at Ballys, some of you sold insurance) or owned a hardwood flooring company.

Obviously the end outcome of this experiment will not be a definitive measurement of the correlation between activity in social media and Twitter followers, but it should provide some insights into how social media impacts personal branding campaigns.  I will track the entire process here, but should point out that all activity (blogging, tumbling, tweeting, flicking, ha) goes through Twitter.

I should also point out that I am starting this experiment with 92 followers.

 

AuthorRobert Boyle | CommentPost a Comment |
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Wednesday
May202009

monetizing twitter

DateWednesday, May 20, 2009 at 04:55PM

In a blog post today, twitter founder Biz Stone lamented the official position of twitter on monetization, which is that:

"The idea of taking money to run traditional banner ads on Twitter.com has always been low on our list of interesting ways to generate revenue. However, facilitating connections between businesses and individuals in meaningful and relevant ways is compelling. We're going to leave the door open for exploration in this area."

This posting has been catching a lot of heat on the blogosphere.  Mostly this heat is coming from embittered, napoleonic creatures that apparently have little else to do except sit around and wait until Techcrunch writes about Twitter... so that they can then write things like "twitter sucks!" and "twitter is over."  I normally attempt to defend Twitter in these threads, but it can be a little overwhelming.  But blogosphere chatter isn't what I want to talk about in this post.

What I want to talk about is how Twitter can monetize.  I know it seems that everyone has their own brilliant idea about monetization, but I don't think that throwing my own into the fray can hurt.  In fact, I think these ideas are pretty much on-point.  But then again, I thought of them, and why would I think of ideas that were not on point to me?  But I digress.

  1. Charge users for vanity @'s.  I think this would be the simplest way to monetize corporate access to Twitter.  All they would have to do is create a process for corporate authentication in which trademark verification occurs.  And then if an account is created that conicides with a verified trademark its use of Twitter is not free. 
  2. Charge for access to real-time search.  "No one is going to buy the Cow if you give the milk away for free".  Unless you have been under a rock (or you don't live in the tech community *gasp*) then you are aware that real-time search is the new black.  And Twitter is Karl Lagerfeld.  Or Michael Kors.  Or apparently Isaac Mizrahi (he just got a new show on Bravo).  Either way, having users pay for access to Twitters vast real-time search information would drive revenue from not just corporate users, but also bloggers, journalists and people who are super interested in how often #Oprah is used.
  3. Partner with brands and creatives to create official Twitter videos.  Imagine a video that showed up in every single Twitter users profile each day.  You could even tweak it by allowing the user to filter topically.  Just put a gChat-sized video above the "Home" tab on the right hand side of the Twitter page, and run the video.  It can be "sponsored by ____" and would get a bajillion views.  This would only work to enhance the user experience and since video CPMs are radically higher than display/richmedia/banner ads, would drive vastly larger sums of revenue.

So these are only 3 ideas of how to monetize Twitter.  And none of them involve in-stream ads, banner ads or display ads.  Intentionally.  Because including these ads would affect the user experience, which is really the core of Twitter and where it derives its value.  And that would be a bad idea.

AuthorRobert Boyle | CommentPost a Comment |
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Thursday
May142009

twittergadget.

DateThursday, May 14, 2009 at 11:35PM

Just a quick note before I disconnect for the night:

If you have gmail and twitter, and don't have twittergadget, then you are missing out.  I don't know if I am late or early on this, but it is really pretty sick.  I know there are tons of desktop apps (for both Macs and PCs) for twitter, but I really never use them (desktop apps) because there are so many plug-ins and add-ons available for basically any browser/platform/device. 

Anyway, i came across this link via GigaOm (thanks GigaOM).  So now I am sharing it with you.

AuthorRobert Boyle | CommentPost a Comment |
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Wednesday
May132009

ok, everybody meet Mr. Me too

DateWednesday, May 13, 2009 at 05:28PM

In a really wonderful op-ed piece for VentureBeat, David Shen addressed the issue of me-too startups.  Specifically, how the current marketplace of ideas seems to be flooded with products that provide similar services and employ similar models.  To read the full article click here.

What I wanted to address was Shen's opening paragraph.  Shen opens with:

"I believe the universe of internet businesses has become extremely crowded in the last few years. In the early days, you could easily come out with something new because there weren’t that many competitors out there. Now, it’s hard to find somebody who isn’t working on something similar to what you’re thinking about. So competition is fierce and many times you’ll find entrenched competitors with a lot of product inertia and a great head start."

There is just something about the idea that, "it's hard to find somebody who isn't working on something similar to what you're thinking about."  And this makes me mad.  Because Shen is right.  How many times do you see multiple products launched in the same week that perform the same tasks.  Twitter is unbelievably notorious for this.  I mean seriously, how many twitter picture apps are there at this point?!? (over 20 apps that service twitter pictures).  And I get it.  Twitter is the new hotness and the API isn't rocket science.  But, what happened to genuine innovation.  Instead of another app that lets you take pictures with your phone and shoots a >140 character URL, why not an app that converts images into characters, and consequently allows a person to post a picture in their tweet stream.  That would "disrupt" current technologies, no?

I apologize for the tone of this post (not really), but it seems to me that businesses--especially online businesses--stem from problems.  It has been like this forever.  Can't light that wet match? Here's a waterproof lighter.  Don't want to physically visit 10 different blogs a day?  Here's an RSS feed.  The point is, truly groundbreaking ideas solve problems. 

Which begs the question, where are all of the problem solvers these days?

AuthorRobert Boyle | CommentPost a Comment |
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