Twitter « Socialnomics – Social Media Blog

Entries tagged as ‘Twitter’

NBA Rookie Fined for Positive Tweet

December 20, 2009 · 9 Comments

NBA Rookie Brandon Jennings was recently fined $7,500 by the league office according to a recent post by J.E. Skeets at Yahoo. From the image you can see that the Bucks Rookie was excited about his teams recent win that got his team to a .500 winning percentage with the end of the Tweet stating “Way to Play Hard Guys.” Jennings was fined for the timing of his post, rather than what he Tweeted.

The NBA’s social media policy states that players cannot tweet during game time, defined as beginning 45 minutes before the game starts and ending after players have finished talking to the media after the game.

Jennings was a bit befuddled: “I understand I got fined, but 7500? For being happy over a win, you would of thought I said something bad. I mean it was a big win for us.”

As the NBA is a form of entertainment my guess is that if ratings and attendance continue to drop, don’t be surprised if they loosen this policy a bit to allow the fan base to have a more intimate relationship with the players in the hopes of building a loyal following for its product (games). We saw this earlier in the year with the Ladies Golf Tour (LPGA) – where the commissioner was encouraging golfers to tweet during the event. Male golf Stewart Cink (@stewartcink) has over one million followers as a result of tweets like “Yeah much tougher hole. One of golf’s best tee shots, but not my favorite green.” Speaking of green, ultimately that is what will probably shape most sports leagues social media policies – what drives the most revenue; especially during these tough times.

By Erik Qualman

Categories: Twitter
Tagged: NBA Twitter Policy, Twitter, Twitter Fine

10 Ways Twitter Can Make Money

August 19, 2009 · 14 Comments

The below is primarily composed from my social media column on Search Engine Watch from earlier this year, but it is still one of the top question I get everyday. Hence, I thought it an appropriate post for today – also the response to the book launch of Socialnomics has been overwhelming (in a good way!) so I’ve been responding to all the positive feedback (thanks to all).

How can Twitter make money? That’s the billion-dollar question. This question is important for Twitter, as well as its users and global advertisers.

With traditional advertising proving less effective, marketers need new outlets like Twitter and Facebook to help create interest and demand. Here are some ways Twitter can make money.

1. Answer a Person’s Product Need

We all search in Google, Yahoo, and Bing because we’re looking for something. How do the search engines make money? They make money from sponsored listings when people click on them.

A similar revenue stream could be Twitter’s. Simply ask a question, such as, “Where can I buy the foam things for my iPod headphones?” If a user tweets this, they could get answers from their “followers” — in other words, real people (think organic results). Or, if they opted in, they would receive information direct from foam ear bud cover suppliers (think sponsored listings).

Now, the key for this to work, just like in search, is the relevancy. A good first step would be a simple “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” relevancy button for the supplier tweets. This puts the onus not to spam back on the advertiser, similar to Google’s quality score.

You can see why Google is possibly interested in acquiring Twitter, and also why Google launched Google SearchWiki, which allows users to rate search results and comment on them. Google understands that social media is their most daunting of competition.

2. Be a Recruiting Tool for Job Seekers/Recruiters

Just like Craigslist or LinkedIn Twitter could have employers pay a small fee to easily tweet their jobs. The user would select which titles and occupations they want to receive tweets for.

3. White Label Twitter Functionality for Fortune 500 Companies

Fortune 500 companies don’t understand the Web, but think they do. These companies believe they need micro-blog functionality to keep up with the “Web 2.0 times.” Don’t believe big companies do this? American Airlines and Lufthansa unsuccessfully tried to build their own social networks.

Or going back to the ’90s, remember when every company wanted to build out their own portal? AT&T thought everyone would make their My AT&T page instead of MyYahoo. A company called MyWay (part of Diller’s IAC) made some serious bucks off these portal wannabes. However, I feel companies are now more open to tapping into best of breed, so this may not be as lucrative. They could do something like Yammer though, that is more for internal chatter and connectivity and charge a small license fee per user as a result of the more robust privacy/security needed.

4. Analytics Packages for Companies

Break down the conversations occurring within Twitter into digestible data. The categories can be as simple as: Bad Review, Good Review, Product Question, Top Complaints, etc. The challenge here is that a third party may come along and offer this service for free (e.g., Google Analytics).

5. Local Coupon Pushes

This is probably the most obvious. Someone can simply ask for restaurant specials nearby and be pushed digital coupons.

Due to these tough financial times, visits to coupon related sites were up 33 percent, according to comScore. Cellfire ran a test with retail grocery client Kroger and saw mobile coupon redemption as high as 20 percent.

The time is right for this on Twitter. Other researcher (looking for the source I jotted this down from) indicated that 16 percent of all buyers wouldn’t make a purchase these days without some form of coupon or incentive.

6. Micro-payments for Answers to Questions

Willing to pay 75 cents for the best answer to: “Trying to register my Mac & iTunes so I can rent a movie, but I can’t figure out where to do this on the iTunes Menu – please help!”? Some people certainly are willing to pay 75 cents to assuage a major pain point. Twitter would take a cut of the 75 cents and give the majority to the person answering the question. The beauty here is that the Twitternation does the work and Twitter takes the “pass-thru” cut. Heck, the students at Auburn can probably answer the majority of these questions. If you ever need an answer to something you can call the Auburn Hotline at 334-844-4244. This has often ended many a drunken debate.

7. Analytics Packages for Individuals, Small Business

Just as it’s helpful for big businesses, it would be very useful for journalists, reporters, authors, etc., to be able to easily get a sense of what the public likes and dislikes about their work.

8. Quickly Find Sources for Reporters/Bloggers

Writers on a deadline can pay a subscription to easily be connected to the proper professionals to answer questions germane to their story or post. Professionals would register with the service to make themselves available for the free publicity.

9. Capture Revenue from Wireless Carriers

It’s in the carriers’ best interest to have many text messages flying across their networks. The wireless carriers (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc.) could offer a $5 all-you-can-tweet (has a nice ring to it, no pun intended) monthly package.

10. Premium Service

If you launch a version with paid advertising, then you can launch a premium service that scrubs all the ads — say $4 per month for an advertising-free Twitter. Or the ability to send 3 direct messages to anyone (similar to LinkedIn’s premium package).

Item 10 may be counter-intuitive. The key (and challenge) to all of these ideas: they need to be incorporated into the Twitter experience and enhance it rather than being interruptive detriments. If this isn’t done properly, then the Twitternation will definitely let you know in seconds, and that’s the beauty of it.

Categories: Twitter
Tagged: How Does Twitter Make Money, Twitter

Everyone is Tweeting, but is anyone listening?

March 27, 2009 · 4 Comments

I just returned from Search Engine Strategies New York and the major topic was Twitter. Now, this was helped by the fact that the week was kicked off by an energetic opening keynote speech by Twitter guru, or addict, depending on how you look at it, Guy Kawasaki. Guy had over 100,000 followers prior to his keynote and now has 94,850, which is very interesting. You would think the opposite effect would occur. However, perhaps some thought Guy may have been pushing the line of spamming just a bit. My sense is that he is not, because, if you don’t like it you can always un-follow Guy. Unlike e-mail where anyone can spam you, in Twitter you need to be following someone in order to receive messages.

Britney Spears is popular on Twitter

Whether Guy or Brittney Spears or Lance Armstrong have 94,000 or 550,000 followers, they are A-Listers and people want to hear what they have to say. It’s not because it’s Twitter, it’s because most of these celebrities previously had a platform. Now, there will be a few new “A Listers” that result simply from Twitter, these will be few and far between however. Guy Kawasaki is being helped greatly by Twitter, because he is being aggressively smart.

But, what about the rest of us? If we have 1,500 followers are any of them really listening? I’d argue that most are likely not. However, it is still a huge marketing tool and the nobodies are now the new somebody for the following reason. Twitter is free. Hence, if you have 1,500 followers and are a local plumber, most likely most aren’t listening. However, as long as at least one person is that is all that matters, because of the simple fact that it’s free. If that one person has a plumbing issue, you as the Plumber now have a shot, especially if you acquired these followers simply by limited your search.twitter.com query to people within a 25 mile radius.

The biggest use right now is 1) big businesses following what is being said about their company – see Zappos, JetBlue, Comcast, etc. 2) Celebrities catering to their following by giving realtime updates – see Lance Armstrong Twitter’s about collarbone 3) Individuals attempt to promote themselves, generate a following and make money

And it’s the last point that may eventually cause Twitter to become Tiresome. Just like on Facebook you X out the person that is constantly talking about their turtle, bad hair day, etc. on Facebook, the same holds true here. Is Dale Carnegie rolling over in his grave, because everyone on Twitter is trying to be heard, when the key to winning friends and influencing people is actually listening?

Part of the reason that Twitter is so popular is that some of it’s effectiveness and cool factor is aided by the fact that not everyone is on it. What could I possibly mean by this? In January we sent over 6,000 students (via Smithsonian Student Travel) on educational tours to Washington DC for the historic inauguration. In the past it would have been difficult to get major media outlets attention. However, it was easy to do with Twitter. NPR, MSNBC and PBS immediately replied to our tweet, expressing interest in hearing from our middle school student travelers and their teachers. Now, only two months later. I’ve #JetBlue about my concern that their TVs may not work for my flight this afternoon and this is crucially important as I booked on JetBlue soley for the reason that I could watch MarchMadness on DirectTV. My concern was that the TV’s only worked about 50% of the time on this route and could they try to take steps to ensure they would be functioning…instead of hearing tweet, tweet, I heard cricket, cricket. It was cool when companies and even CEO’s could respond real time, and some still do, but as more and more people join on Twitter that one-to-one will become less and less until the companies can ramp up. And unfortunately instead of getting a witty and salient reply from a CEO or well-informed employee that took Twittering up with consumers because it was cool, you will most likely get a reply from a call center in New Dehli (should we call them Tweet Centers?).

Now, before I get tons of hate mail, there is a need for micro-blogging tools like Twitter, but it’s somewhere in-between poor e-mail (Google’s Eric Schmidt’s words) and the Greatest Thing ever. I still tweet, because the upside is still greater than the downside, and oh, by the way please follow me @equalman.

Categories: Twitter
Tagged: #Comcast, #JetBlue, Britney Spears, Dale Carnegie, equalman, Erik Qualman, Guy Kawasaki, Social Media, Tweeting, Tweets, Twitter, Zappos

Social Media Madness – Final Four

March 18, 2009 · 4 Comments

Below you will see what my predictions are for the sweet sixteen of social media. Thanks to everyone for filling out the social media bracket. The biggest surprise so far is how well Hulu is doing, pulling up some major upsets, which is not what I had predicted below. The final votes will be counted in the next ten days and the winner will be revealed in my social media column on Search Engine Watch.

Will these predictions be the final results? Or, will there be major upsets! Fill out your bracket today.

So far Facebook has captured the most overall wins with YouTube coming in second, but it’s a tight race. Fill out your backet today via this bracket Facebook application (vote) and feel free to send me your thoughts on seeding/participants on Twitter @equalman.

The Final Four

This is today’s social media goliath. After opening its network up beyond college students in late 2006, Facebook has quickly risen to the top, which is why it’s the overall number one seed and the favorite to win it all.

Key Wins: Status Updates and Photo Tagging allow users to easily stay connected throughout the day. Facebook is the most-used photo-sharing platform in the world, having more activity than all other photo sites (Ofoto, Flickr, Snapfish, etc.) combined. Facebook Connect allows users to use their Facebook login on various sites (e.g., CNET) to post comments and reviews. They have 180 million users in 170 countries in 35 different languages.

Key Losses: The poorly handled releases of some new product offerings like Beacon haven’t helped assuage privacy concerns. Beacon follows user purchase behaviors around the Web and in one instance alerted a girlfriend that her boyfriend had purchased an engagement ring on Amazon. Blocked by Syria and Iran. Still struggling to find a sound revenue model.

Business Use: Setting up fan and group pages is a good way for loyal users to engage and take ownership of your brand. Victoria’s Secret has more than1 million fans and Barack Obama has close to 5.5 million fans.

Coach: CEO Mark Zuckerberg is only 24 years old and has this Palo Alto company valuation at around $3.75 billion (down from $15 billion).

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to post their latest updates. An update is limited by 140 characters and can be posted through three methods: web form, text message, or instant message.

Key wins: Probably the most talked about company in the bracket the last month. Skittles.com using Twitter as their home page has given them great exposure as has CNN and Shaq.

Key losses: Twitter still hasn’t figured out a good way to make money (10 Ways Twitter Can Make Money) although they recently announced premium packages fittingly named after birds sparrow, dove, owl and eagle. While their server issues and downtimes have been greatly improved they are still an issue. Facebook’s new design is very similar to Twitter and could chew into Twitter’s market share. While Moms are joining Facebook, Twitter is still primarily used by celebrities, companies and the technorati.

Business Use: At a minimum, companies should be using search.twitter.com to see what is being said about their product. Zappos, JetBlue, CNN, EF Tours, Skittles and Comcast are good examples of companies that understand the business use.

Coach: Evan Williams spent some time at Google before leaving in 2004. Twitter is headquartered in San Francisco. He was named in Time’s 2008 Top 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

YouTube is the leader in online video, sharing original videos worldwide through a Web experience. YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips across the Internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs, and email.

Key wins: The dominant online video destination. Google was purchased by Google in October of 2006 for $1.65 Billion only a year after launch.

Key losses: Hulu and others will prove to be stiff competition in the future as all television and entertainment content moves online. Google CEO Eric Schmidt has admitted that YouTube has struggled to monetize. Perception by Fortune 500 companies is that it’s not easy nor brand friendly to advertise on YouTube. Have been sued by Viacom.

Business Use: Companies need to leverage their customer base enthusiasm for their product and showcase these videos on YouTube. Anything companies can do to encourage this type of behavior will help spread their brand awareness. Attempting to develop something viral is very difficult to do within internal marketing departments.

Coach: YouTube was founded in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim – all early employees of PayPal. Chad is the current CEO headquartered in San Bruno, CA.

Some argue Wikipedia started the open source and social sharing revolution. Despite naysayers, studies have shown that Wikipedia is as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica.

Key Wins: Almost pervasively the number one search result in Google for any topic or public figure related search query. As a result of Wikipedia’s success, Encyclopedia Britannica recently adopted a hybrid of the Wikipedia model.

Key Losses: The technology isn’t the most user friendly. It would be difficult for the general Internet population to quickly and easily figure out how to thoroughly update and edit; perhaps this is by design. Just like with DMOZ a few years back, the people who have earned editor status have too much power and they love to use it. For the longest time, CNET’s Tom Merritt, Molly Wood, and Jason Howell were scrubbed by editors. Are you kidding? Wikipedia also makes a habit of blacklisting blogs. For niche topics, the accuracy can be less than reliable.

Business Use: You need to know what is written about your company and make appropriate, non-hyperbolic edits. If you can optimize for search, all the better.

Coach: CEO Jimmy Wales founded the company (along with Larry Sanger) in January 2001, and is based in San Francisco.

Other Players:

Flickr is a video and photo sharing site that has two main objectives 1) help people make their content available to the people who matter to them and 2) enable new ways of organizing photos and video.

Key wins: Yahoo purchased Flickr for $35 million in March of 2005. Sites like Snapfish, Ofoto, etc. have made it difficult for users to easily share photos and flickr has benefited. Flickr has expanded into video sharing.

Key losses: Facebook has quickly overtaken Flickr as the number one photo sharing destination. What’s their long term revenue model?

Business Use: Companies should setup accounts to host appropriate video and photos. This is a particularly helpful tool when running photo contests as its inherent sharing capabilities enable user generated photos to be quickly distributed to your company site as well as other social media sites.

Coach: Former game designers Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake created Flickr, in 2004. Butterfield is currently in charge.

Delicious is a social book marking Web site. It’s used to store bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too.

Key wins: Got rid of the hard-to-remember del.icio.us URL. Tags allow you to organize and remember your bookmarks, which is a much more flexible system than folders. Acquired by Yahoo in 2005 for an estimated $10-$15 million.

Key losses: Founder Joshua Schachter left January 12 to join Google.

Business Use: Easy for employees in the same department to keep track of relevant sites and articles. Also for content and entertainment producers it’s an easy way to determine which articles/postings the general public finds most relevant.

Coach: Managed by Yahoo, Sunnyvale, California.

LinkedIn is a professional networking site that allows members to create business contacts, search for jobs, and find potential clients.

Key wins: With more than 30 million users representing 150 industries around they have a virtual monopoly on the professional networking field.

Key losses: User aren’t active nor is the network “sticky.” They use the site for specific periodic needs.

Business Use: This will be the place in the future where almost all jobs are searched for and found. It’s important for companies to establish a respectable and polished presence as well as begin to build out their network. This not only includes human resources, but the leaders and executives in these companies.

Coach: Reid Hoffman is the CEO and they are based out of Mountain View, CA.

Orkut is a social networking service that is run by Google and named after its creator, Turkish Google engineer Orkut Buyukkokten.

Key wins: Dominates the social network market share for Latin America, in particular Brazil. It’s also arguably the most popular social network in India and the second most visited site.

Key losses: Over dependent on Brazil (58 percent of its users). Not contributing much revenue to Google, which is looking to eliminate underperforming business units.

Business Use: Great play for companies heavy in Latin and South America.

Coach: Owned by Google, Mountain View, California. In August 2008 announced that Orkut hosting would be moved from California to Brazil.

Yammer is often described as the internal social network for businesses, or the Twitter for business. It’s the self-professed water cooler, allowing employees to update other employees about articles and events (free bagels in kitchen), which is much more efficient and effective than e-mail. It allows e-mail to be saved for items that require a response and eliminates cc: abuse.

Key wins: Cisco, Xerox, and Hewlett-Packard all use it to help increase conversation and communication between employees while reducing meetings. Access is limited by company e-mail address.

Key losses: Is this really increasing business productivity or simply adding one more inbox that employees need to check?

Business Use: Sign-up is easy and free. Rather than answer the Twitter question “What are you doing?” employees answer the question “What are you working on?”

Coach: PayPal co-founder David Sacks, West Hollywood, California; originally built as an internal tool for Geni — it was so effective that they made it public in 2008.

Digg is a social bookmarking site. After content is submitted other people “Digg” what they like best. Stories that receive enough Diggs are promoted to the front page.

Key Wins: Attracts at least 236 million visitors annually, according to Compete. Founder Kevin Rose was on the cover of BusinessWeek.

Key Losses: Have faced a user revolt as a result of some companies gaming the system. BusinessWeek reported that Digg lost $4 million on $6.4 million of revenue in the first three quarters of 2008.

Business Use: Don’t try to game the system. This will end poorly. Follow what your customers/readers find of most interest and adjust product/services/content accordingly.

Coach: CEO Jay Adelson is based out of Digg’s San Francisco headquarters.

Hulu is NBC Universal and News Corporation’s online video joint venture. The site focuses exclusively on professional content and serves the video within an embedded player on Hulu.

Key wins: Advertising brand recall is higher in Hulu than on traditional TV networks as a result McDonald’s, BestBuy, HP, ALPO, etc. have made large media buys. One reason is they tell the user there will be a 30-second commercial and shows the seconds counting down. Avoids the Tivo/DVR issue. Hulu served about 221 million streams to about 7.5 million unique visitors in November, up from 206 million videos and 9 million unique visitors in October.

Key losses: Hulu may turn out to be the Napster of online video viewing. They’re victims of their own success as entertainment providers crack the privacy whip.

Business Use: Achieves great brand recall and awareness for companies willing to get creative.

Coach: CEO Jason Kilar spent almost a decade at Amazon.com before heading up this Los Angeles-based venture.

Hi5 is a social network site similar to Facebook, Orkut, and MySpace. According to comScore, in 2008 hi5 was the third most popular social networking site in terms of monthly unique visitors. Ranked as a top 20 Web site globally and the number one social network in more than 30 countries across Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Available in 37 languages.

Key wins: As of February, hi5 claims to have more than 80 million active members, which is up from 60 million in December. Hi5 claims to be number one in the Spanish speaking community.

Key losses: For how successful hi5 has been they do not get much press — primarily due to its limited U.S. market share. In Thailand, where they have a solid market share, users are starting to use Facebook, even though Facebook isn’t specifically tailored for the Thai market. Is this a sign of things to come?

Business Use: It’s very important for global companies to test and play in the Latin and Asian markets, where hi5 has significant market share.

Coach: Privately held firm is steered by founder and CEO Ramu Yalamanchi out of San Francisco.

MySpace, which launched January 1 2004, is a popular social networking site that lets friends share, message and stay connected.

Key wins: Started social network craze. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation acquired MySpace in June 2005. In August of 2006 signed a $900 million dollar deal with Google for Google to be the exclusive search provider. MySpace is profitable.

Key losses: A poor technology platform and limited advancement of the product has allowed competitors like Hi5, Facebook, etc. to over take them in various markets. Google deal expires next year which may be the reason they are profitable.

Business Use: If you are a celebrity or band, MySpace is the place you want to be to promote yourself.

Coach: Co-Founder and CEO Chris DeWolf steers the company from Los Angeles DeWolfe has B.A. degree in Finance from the University of Washington and an MBA from the University of Southern California.

LiveMocha is a hybrid between social network and a language learning Website.

Key wins: Have the backing of Starbuck’s CEO Howard Schultz, which may be way the name is closely related to coffee. New York Times calls it “a powerful opportunity for people around the world to connect with language partners.” Limited competition; LiveMocha competes with italki, a China-based startup offering similar services.

Key losses: Not much brand awareness, still in beta mode. Overwhelming number of Chinese attempting to learn English don’t have enough English friends trying to learn Chinese.

Business Use: Most applicable for travel and offline language learning tools. Also, if employees are trying to learn a language for business reasons this is a great free way.

Coach: CEO and Chief Roaster Shirish Nadkarni enjoys his coffee in Bellevue, WA

Categories: Social Media
Tagged: Bebo, Del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, FriendFeed, hi5, Hulu, Livemocha, MySpace, social media bracket, Social Media Final Four, social media madness, Twitter, Wikipedia

Google SearchWiki Preempts Twitter & Facebook Competition

March 18, 2009 · 2 Comments

Google owns close to 100-percent market share in the search engine wars because it’s the best at helping us find what we’re looking for. While it’s the best, it still has room for improvement. Google is a great company with smart people, so they recognize their product is not perfect. To date, Google hasn’t moved rapidly to fix

Google SearchWiki is one of Google's Social Media Plays

these imperfections, primarily because their competition hasn’t forced them to. Can one blame them for not wanting to tinker with something that continues to gain market share?

However, in the last year, Google has properly recognized that their stiffest competition in the future will most likely not come from MSN or Yahoo, but rather from Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter and other social media.

If you search for someone famous or something factual, a Wikipedia page is likely the top result. That’s why more people go straight to Wikipedia or use tools such as Powerset.

After performing a Google search for a product or service, you’re bombarded with advertisements all touting the same thing in 35 characters or less — cheapest fares! best value! lowest price guaranteed! — with the top advertising placements going to those that generate the most revenue over the long term for Google rather than the most relevant personal result for you.

Everyone receiving the same search results is analogous to going to Nordstrom to buy a dress and the sales clerk offering you selections without determining what size you are.

Going back to search, let’s say that we’re in the market to purchase a baby seat for our newborn. Do we care more about what our friends recommend to check out, or what Google recommends? Most respect their friends’ opinions about products more than the Google algorithm. If this isn’t the case, you need new friends.

This means there’s plenty of opportunity for Facebook. They already have the technology (Facebook Beacon) to track user purchases on Websites outside of Facebook (Beacon can track books I purchase on Amazon.com, for example).

As a user, it’s much more helpful for me to see a list of results of what baby seats my friends purchased, how much they paid, and what their reviews are, combined with supplier ads (think Google sponsored ad listings) than the Google results today — results that don’t have anything about what my friends think.

If Facebook can cobble the good technology they already have (Connect, Beacon, etc.) and assuage privacy concerns, then they could literally steal billions of dollars in revenue from Google.

Google recognized this deficiency and launched Google SearchWiki, which enables users with Google accounts (Gmail, Google analytics, etc.) to rate and comment on the search results. Users also have the ability to see other users’ comments around a certain search listing. This is a significant step for Google into the social media space. Some pundits guess that Google will capture this user generated data and adjust their organic ratings based on what the public feels should be number one rather than Googlebot.

Mircroblogging tools like Twitter also capture Google’s interest since it seems possible that users may “tweet” “Having issues setting up my Apple TV, please help!” This frustrated user would receive suggestions from friends, be contacted by Apple Support, and also receive pay-per-click messages from manufacturers with products for the Apple TV. Just like in Google SearchWiki someone on Twitter would be able to give the responses “a thumbs up” or “thumbs down.”

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out, but in the end, this technology arms race and increased competition greatly benefits users and advertisers.

Categories: Facebook · Social Media · Twitter
Tagged: Facebook, Google Search Wiki, Google SearchWiki, Google Wiki, Twitter, Wiki for Search

Social Media March Madness — Social Media Bracket

March 9, 2009 · 1 Comment

Since College Basketball’s March Madness is almost upon us, I felt it only appropriate to put together a Social Media Madness bracket in the hopes of answering: Who is or who will become the king of Social Media? Is it Facebook? Twitter? Or is it a “Cinderella Player” like Livemocha? Fill out your picks here Facebook’s Bracket Builder !

We are down to the Sweet Sixteen. For each company I list their strengths (key wins) and weaknesses (key losses) and point out how your company or brand can leverage these social media offerings. This week we discuss the winners and losers of Region One and detail out this week’s Region Two match-ups.

We have added new ways to submit your picks (thanks for the immense response so far!). You can fill out via Facebook’s Bracket Builder or Twitter your response to @equalman or #S16.

Region One Results:

Facebook(1) vs. Yammer(4): Facebook mopped the floor with its brand new baby brother (Yammer is a social network for business). We’ll see if in time Yammer has the last laugh.

Delicious(2) vs. Orkut(3): Orkut may have won this match-up a few years back, but they appear to be evolving into a niche player (Brazil and India); Delicious had the hot hand and narrowly escapes with a win. Delicious’ celebration could be short lived as they now face #1 overall seed Facebook.

Region Two Match-Ups/Players:

This is another loaded region, although probably not quite as strong as Region 2. Region 3 is arguably the strongest region. Below are write-ups on why each of these four companies has made it this far into the tournament.

Wikipedia(1) vs. Hi5(4)

Digg(2) vs. Hulu(3)

Some argue Wikipedia started the open source and social sharing revolution. Despite naysayers, studies have shown that Wikipedia is as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica (reference: http://is.gd/lW5P and http://is.gd/lW6y).

Key Wins: Almost pervasively the #1 search result in Google for any topic or public figure related search query. As a result of Wikipedia’s success, Encyclopedia Britannica recently adopted a hybrid of the Wikipedia model.

Key Losses: The technology is not the most user friendly. It would be difficult for the general Internet population to quickly and easily figure out how to thoroughly update and edit; perhaps this is by design. Just like with DMOZ a few years back, the people that have earned editor status have too much power and they love to use it. For the longest time CNET’s Tom Merritt, Molly Wood and Jason Howell were being scrubbed by editors – are you kidding? Wikipedia also makes a habit of blacklisting blogs. For niche topics, the accuracy can be less than reliant.

Business Use: You need to know what is written about your company and make appropriate, non-hyperbolic edits. If you can optimize for search, all the better.

Coach: CEO Jimmy Wales helped found the company, along with Larry Sanger in January of 2001, and is based in San Francisco.

Digg is a social bookmarketing site. After content is submitted other people “Digg” what they like best. If your story receives enough Diggs, it’s promoted to the front page.

Key Wins: Attracts at least 236 million visitors annually (Compete 2008). Founder Kevin Rose was on the cover of BusinessWeek.

Key Losses: Have faced user revolt as a result of some companies gaming the system. BusinessWeek reported that Digg lost 4 million dollars on 6.4 million dollars of revenue in the first three quarters of 2008.

Business Use: Do not try to game the system, this will end up poorly. Do follow what your customers/readers find of most interest and adjust product/services/content accordingly.

Coach: CEO Jay Adelson is based out of the San Francisco headquarters.

Hulu is NBC Universal and News Corporation’s online video joint venture. The site focuses exclusively on professional content and serves the video within an embedded player on hulu.com

Key wins: Advertising brand recall is higher in Hulu than on traditional TV networks as a result McDonald’s, BestBuy, HP, ALPO, etc. have made large media buys. One reason is they tell the user there will be a :30 commercial and shows the seconds counting down. Avoids the Tivo/DVR issue. Hulu served about 221 million streams to about 7.5 million unique visitors in November, up from 206 million videos and 9 million unique visitors in October.

Key losses: Hulu may turn out to be the Napster of online video viewing. They are a victim of their own success as entertainment providers crack the privacy whip.

Business Use: Achieves great brand recall and awareness for companies willing to get creative.

Coach: CEO Jason Kilar spent almost a decade at amazon.com before heading up this Los Angeles based venture.

Hi5 is a social network site similar to Facebook, Orkut and MySpace. According to comScore, in 2008 Hi5 was the third most popular social networking site in terms of monthly unique visitors. Ranked as a top 20 website globally and the #1 social network in over 30 countries across Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Hi5 is currently available in 37 language options.

Key wins: As of February 2009, hi5 claims to have over 80 million active members which is up from 60 million in December. Very popular in the Spanish speaking community which Hi5 claims to be #1 in.

Key losses: For how succesful they’ve been they do not get much press. In Thailand where they have a solid market share users are starting to use Facebook, even though Facebook isn’t tailored for the Thai market specificly. Is this a sign of things to come?

Business Use: Very important for Global companies to test and play in the Latin and Asian markets where Hi5 has significant market share.

Coach: Privately held firm is steered by founder and CEO Ramu Yalamanchi out of San Francisco.

Region 1	Region 2	Region 3	Region 4
1. Facebook	1. Wikipedia	1. YouTube	1. Twitter
2. Delicious	2. Digg	2. MySpace	2. LikedIn
3. Orkut	3. Hulu	3. FriendFeed	3. Flickr
4. Yammer	4. Hi5	4. Livemocha	4. Bebo

This is today’s social media Goliath. After opening its network up beyond college students in late 2006 Facebook has quickly risen to the top and is why it’s this tournaments’ overall number one seed and the hands down favorite to win it all.

Key Wins: Status Updates and Photo Tagging allow users to easily stay connected throughout the day. Facebook is the most used photo sharing platform in the world having more activity than all other photo sites (Ofoto, Flickr, Snapfish, etc.) combined. Facebook Connect allows users to use their Facebook login on various sites (e.g., CNET) to post comments and reviews. They have 175 million users in 170 countries in 35 different languages.

Key Losses: The poorly handled releases of some new product offerings like Beacon have not helped assuage privacy concerns. Beacon follows user purchase behaviors around the Web and in one instance alerted a girlfriend that her boyfriend had purchased an engagement ring on Amazon. Blocked by Syria and Iran. Still struggling to find a sound revenue model.

Business Use: Setting up fan and group pages is a good way for loyal users to engage and take ownership of your brand. Victoria’s Secret has over 1 million fans and Barack Obama has close to 5.5 million fans.

Coach: CEO Mark Zuckerberg is only 24 years old and has this Palo Alto company valuation at around $3.75 billion (down from $15 billion).

Delicious is a social bookmarking website – used to store bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too.

Key wins: Got rid of the hard to remember del.icio.us URL. Tags allow you to organize and remember your bookmarks, which is a much more flexible system than folders. Acquired by Yahoo in 2005 for an estimated $10-$15 million.

Key losses: Founder Joshua Schachter left to join Google on January 12, 2009

Business Use: Easy for employees in the same department to keep track of relevant sites and articles. Also for content and entertainment producers it’s an easy way to determine which articles/postings the general public finds most relevant.

Coach: Managed by Yahoo – Sunnyvale, CA

Orkut is a social networking service that is run by Google and named after its creator, a Google Turkish Engineer- Orkut Büyükkökten.

Key wins: Dominate the social network market share for Latin America, in particular Brazil. They are also arguably the most popular social network in India and the second most visited site.

Key losses: Over dependent on Brazil (58% of it’s users). Not contributing much revenue to Google, which is currently looking to eliminate underperforming business units.

Business Use: Great play for companies heavy in Latin and South America.

Coach: Owned by Google – Mountain View, CA. In August 2008 announced that Orkut hosting would be moved from California to Brazil.

Yammer is often described as the internal social network for businesses or the Twitter for business. It’s the self-professed water cooler allowing employees to update other employees about articles and events (free bagels in kitchen), which is much more efficient and effective than e-mail. It allows e-mail to be saved for items that require a response and eliminates cc: abuse.

Key wins: Cisco, Xerox and Hewlett-Packard all use it to help increase conversation and communication between employees while reducing meetings. Access is limited by company e-mail address.

Key losses: Is this really increasing business productivity or simply adding one more inbox that employees need to check?

Business Use: Sign-up is easy and free. Rather than answer the Twitter question “What are you doing?” employees answer the question “What are you working on?”

Coach: PayPal co-founder David Sacks – West Hollywood, CA; originally built as an internal tool for Geni – it was so effective that they made it public In 2008.

Categories: Social Media
Tagged: Bebo, Del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, FriendFeed, hi5, Hulu, LinkedIn, Livemocha, MySpace, Orkut, social media bracket, social media madness, Twitter, Wikipedia, Yammer, YouTube

Socialnomics – Social Media Blog

Entries tagged as ‘Twitter’

NBA Rookie Fined for Positive Tweet

December 20, 2009 · 9 Comments

10 Ways Twitter Can Make Money

August 19, 2009 · 14 Comments

Socialnomics The Book

2010 Top 100 Books List

Search Socialnomics

Recent Posts

Top Posts

Socialnomics RSS Feed

twitter@equalman

Trending Tags

Archives

Blogroll

Meta

Pages

Socialnomics on Sale Now

July 2010
M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Jun
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

Entries tagged as ‘Twitter’

December 20, 2009 · 9 Comments

August 19, 2009 · 14 Comments

August 6, 2009 · 1 Comment

April 21, 2009 · Leave a Comment

March 27, 2009 · 4 Comments

March 18, 2009 · 4 Comments

March 18, 2009 · 2 Comments

March 9, 2009 · 1 Comment

Socialnomics The Book

2010 Top 100 Books List

Search Socialnomics

Recent Posts

Top Posts

Trending Tags

Archives

Blogroll

Meta

Pages

Socialnomics on Sale Now