Comments on: why monetizing twitter [with ads] won’t work

By: mark slater

mark slater — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:48:00 +0000

Vanessa –

enjoyed reading this. I have been thinking about this for some time and penned my brief comments here:
http://markgslater.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/ad-ly-spamming-microformats/

the rules for advertizing in a realtime format are in my view very different to the curated one.

best

mark

By: Spiro Spiliadis

Spiro Spiliadis — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:55:11 +0000

My thoughts… if we look at the structure of how “making money” through online advertising has evolved over the past ten years we will see the number one factor has always been from affiliation.

Thus, twitter could possibly crate their own affiliate program based on the links that are shared by twitter uses where in turn they get a commission from that sale.

for example, if i am promoting my book and twitter is where i add my links to that book, then trackable links after purchase i am assuming can be tracked thus giving a commission to twitter for the sale. (after all they helped)

think about even if it was a small percentage the amount of revenue generated from taking a cut from us…

By: why monetizing twitter [with ads] won't work « emergent by design | twitteradvertisingandmarketingtools.com

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 09:10:35 +0000

[...] Read more: why monetizing twitter [with ads] won't work « emergent by design [...]

By: Venessa Miemis

Venessa Miemis — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 14:07:42 +0000

i agree, a poor choice.

By: Bertil Hatt

Bertil Hatt — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 12:37:21 +0000

Food court sounds like a very US-based analogy to me—that’s the problem with soft, social metaphors.

By: Bertil Hatt

Bertil Hatt — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 12:35:42 +0000

I like this idea — and I actually suggested something close in Scoble comments, a year ago, when twitter hit mainstream and the questions about business models started to roll. I think I called it “actionnable tweets”, or something similarly enthusiastic. However, it’s up to the client to implement it: even if it’s part of twitter’s stream, it is in (big) client’s interest to replace Coke ads by Pepsi’s. Twitter.com is still the largest client so “client” only mean third party half the time. That idea could all at once:
- improve twitter UX by integrating one-click shopping and similarly smooth process;
- make twitter ecosystem durably profitable which is good, and turn twitter itself into a cash-cow;
- allow some more axis for personalisation (action preference, filtering by ad type) enriching the whole widgetosphere.

But I’m not sure it’s the best idea for twitter.

I really like the business model centred around being a polling tool that Facebook introduced at Davos, and I’d sad it didn’t spread its wings beyond that demo. I’m especially sad that the social tools that only a rich social graph like only Facebook had (distant friends of Prius owners tend to switch from “would love to buy one” to “happy owner” rapidly, while close family members rarely take the move) haven’t developed yet. Although twitter cannot do it the same way, it could provide similar insights, tweaked towards the its specific type of relations. (I’d say those are more synchronous, more asymetric distant, interested & topic-based than on Facebook, but I don’t have data to back that up.)

Both models rely on distinct assets:

* the first on the experience of the stream, and the consensus that twitter is a great activity stream. That consensus is very true, fickle & twitter success is based on not defending it too much (at least not closely as fiercely as Facebook’s) — so I’d recommend experimenting with it, if only to give some code to Scoble to play with, but moderately (opt-in, etc.), but I’m expecting Facebook to do a killing with those. We don’t see much socially targeted ads in France, but the one I saw was great: a chick flick was opening the next week, and it tried to leverage the stream to help posses coordinate to see it, sell advance tickets, inflate the first week figures, have a few boys stir up some controversies, and probably try to have stats to convince a star to come along as a surprise guest at the local Première.

* the second is the social graph. That one is harder to copy & leverage, so I’d expect twitter to be better at this one, especially if it coordinates with url-shorteners and hires a few socio-semantic graph experts.

By: La fin du marketing tel que nous le connaissons ? | Sonnez en cas d'absence

La fin du marketing tel que nous le connaissons ? | Sonnez en cas d'absence — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:11:02 +0000

[...] de Twitter, par exemple, tel que l’a récemment soulevé Venessa Miemis dans son blog, Emergent by Design, est l’exemple parfait des questions qui se posent à [...]

By: The End of Marketing as We Know It? | Sonnez en cas d'absence

The End of Marketing as We Know It? | Sonnez en cas d'absence — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:08:59 +0000

[...] Twitter’s monetization problem, for instance, as Venessa Miemis recently pinpointed on her blog, Emergent by Design, is a perfect example of this upcoming [...]

By: Story Curation for the Week of Jan. 26, 2010

Story Curation for the Week of Jan. 26, 2010 — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 15:22:37 +0000

[...] why monetizing twitter [with ads] won’t work Published: January 27, 2010 Source: emergent by design Maybe it was sparked by a new course I’m taking on digital media strategy, or some recent data on Twitter users and engagement, but it got me to thinking about the big question of how Twitter is going to… [...]

By: Thierry de Baillon

Thierry de Baillon — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 10:43:05 +0000

Ignoring advertising is anything but what advertisers want, great point. In this scenario, we will ignore them because we are there to engage in conversations. But think about the insane number of “inactive” Twitter accounts, those people who don’t follow and don’t engage. Are they really inactive, or are they just sitting there, lurking and… maybe clicking to follow links? If this is the case, there is still a lot of room left for effective advertising.

BTW, Twitter is the only service where we talk about inactive users. There is no such a thing for Facebook, MySpace, Orkut,etc. Why? Because inactivity is a subjective matter, and when Twitter choses to monetize, we won’t be able to access such data anymore. “Inactive” user are still monetizable accounts.

Gaps is quite a similar subject. I am not sure alas about the correct translation (forgive my sometimes insufficient English). By talking clock number, I refer to the phone number you dial to get a recorded voice to give you the exact time, twice a minute. Conversations were sparkling there in between, the fact that they were interrupted twice a minute didn’t really matter, as it was such a funny place to talk with other people, and you also could unconsciously grab the exact time it was, in the space between conversations. Twitter is more a protocol than a network, and multiple channels are already operating there, most are conversations, but not all. I refer to those other channels as “gaps”. I think notably about those experiments which allow a plant to tweet whenever it is thirsty. Stowe Boyd’s microsyntax experiments are hardly readable too. Why wouldn’t advertising become a different channel, where we could dive in on an opt-in basis?

These are only random thoughts, of course. But the world we live in is no more a linear predictable one, traditional and digital marketing techniques do not apply here anymore, as you in fact underlined in your post. Exploring new tracks beyond engagement and eyeballs might be required.
Thierry