At the time I didn't have any idea how quickly this would/could happen....
I am not sure what 'The Tipping Point" actually was although having Stephen Fry as (unofficial) Twitter envoy for the UK and specifically his interview on Jonathan Ross would appear to have had quite some impact.
It would now seem that every DJ on Radio 1 (and i don't doubt most other Yoof stations) is talking about it and i didn't think that i would see the day that 'Micro-Blogging' would enter the UK mainstream media - could it be a contender for a place in the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary?.
As I mentioned in my earlier post the one thing that seems to be missing from the (commercial) success of Twitter has been some form of business model, something that i am sure has been giving Biz (Stone, Twitter's founder) some sleepless nights.
So, it appears that he has cracked it (or not!), an article i read this morning on Brand Republic quotes Biz as saying that he will introduce charges for corporations on Twitter "'We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts", although Brand Republic state that "he wouldn't be drawn on the level of charges."
A couple of interest bods are also quoted with Bob Pearson of Dell saying that "(their) instinct would be to go elsewhere" and Robin Grant from social media consultancy We Are Social suggesting that maybe that monetization could be introduced through display advertising and/or allowing companies to pay to access individual information.
Clearly for any business to be viable it needs to make cash and have a revenue stream that isn't just reliant on VC funding but this, to me, seems to be an odd way to go.
Interestingly Biz has mentioned "companies" and not "Brands", the thing with brands is where would you draw the line?, is a band a brand?, is a celebrity a brand? - i think that you argue this both way for each of these examples - so who would decide who pays or doesn't?.
From an acquisition/customer services perspective i can see why companies may consider stumping up some cash to stay involved in the conversation. However if this (shortsighted?) plan spells the death of brands on Twitter could it kill Twitter entirely?... where else will the cash come from?
If you look at Facebook they have moved away from ads being able to be inserted into their News Feed, we know that display advertising is becoming increasingly less effective and personally I don't know how individuals would respond to their conversation about the latest Nike trainers being met with a 'tweet' from JD Sports offering to sell them said trainers with 10% if they buy them now....
I guess time will tell.
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I had quite a long philosophical conversation with Fiona about this when she was writing the article, which is not entirely summed up with the quote she used (I've got some work to do on the pithy sound bite front, obviously).
ReplyDeleteThe challenge Twitter will face is that there's such a grey line between personal and commercial use.
Aside from the celebrity issue, where they are clearly individuals, but using the service for commercial gain, it's grey elsewhere too.
If I spend a lot of my time on Twitter talking about business related stuff, where does that leave me?
For brands overtly using Twitter, it's not black and white either. Look at Ford's Scott Monty for example (@ScottMonty), who uses his personal account to represent Ford. Even the account we run for Skype (@PeteratSkype) is as an individual not a brand (as is the same for all of Dell's accounts). And of course Zappos famously have hundreds of employees on Twitter
Let's face it, one of the reasons that Twitter is popular is because it's such an interesting mix of both your personal and your business life - if fact, unlike Facebook or LinkedIn, it lets you be the whole you. Twitter will be risking a lot if they try to change this.