My thoughts on Twitter's "Promoted Tweets"

NYTimes is reporting that tomorrow, Twitter will be announcing the much-anticipated plan for making money from advertising. This they will be doing using what they have termed as "Promoted Tweets".

The advertising program, which Twitter calls Promoted Tweets, will show up when Twitter users search for keywords that the advertisers have bought to link to their ads. Later, Twitter plans to show promoted posts in the stream of Twitter posts, based on how relevant they might be to a particular user.

And how do you choose which Tweets get promoted, Twitter has come up with a Resonance score using which it will determine which Tweet needs to be pushed as promoted post. From the same article:

Twitter will measure what it calls resonance, which takes into account nine factors, including the number of people who saw the post, the number of people who replied to it or passed it on to their followers, and the number of people who clicked on links.
If a post does not reach a certain resonance score, Twitter will no longer show it as a promoted post. That means that the company will not have to pay for it, and users will not see ads they do not find useful, Mr. Costolo said.

While I feel that if done right this will be a win-win for all as Twitter plans to roll this out to Third Party Developers, like John Battele, I also saw the following in the same article.

...Companies will “be able to increase awareness in that instance when the iron is most malleable,” said Anamitra Banerji, who manages commercial products at Twitter.
If a new movie is getting negative reaction, the studio could use the ads to link to a positive review, for example.
...
In the next phase of Twitter’s revenue plan, it will show promoted posts in a user’s Twitter stream, even if a user did not perform a search and does not follow the advertiser.

Now this is little scary with the kind of example given above. I value the reviews/recommendations of my immediate friends and then the friends (who I don't know personally but are revered and I follow because I feel they are the authority, people like Scoble, Dave Winer etc). If my friends or "revered" friends are giving negative feedback about a Movie, a positive tweet coming from Studio is a farce/distraction and something I won't appreciate in my timeline. Also, the Promoted tweet in this case will be very difficult to ignore unlike online banner/image/text ads thus negating the whole tweet reading experience. I hope Twitter would be looking at all such scenarios. Overall I am excited about the new revenue model coming from Twitter. If done right, it will enrich the Twitter eco-system and benefits all - Advertisers, Twitter Client Developers, End Users and Twitter ofcourse.

WebJives NewsRiver

Few weeks back I used Dave Winer's River2 to create WebJives NewsRiver. It's an app that runs in the OPML Editor (again developed by Dave Winer) that implements a River of News aggregator. Dave has enabled to upload the River on Dropbox enabling you to publish your river news. River2 has changed how I get and read my news. WebJives News River currently tracks 35 Tech/Media Blogs/News sites.

DigiJives #4 – Twitter News, Social Media Demographics & Email Marketing Stats

Online Content, News Papers etc

The Huffington Post launches Real time Twitter edition
The Huffington Post is launching a “Twitter edition” which according to the release will incorporates the news value of breaking tweets into HuffPost’s signature combination of real-time news and analysis. HuffPost’s 19 sections now have their own Twitter versions with each following a selected group of notable tweeters.

More commentary by paidContent.

Social Networks

Twitter acquires Tweetie
Twitter has acquired Atebits, the one man company that makes the Tweetie apps for using Twitter on Mac computers and iPhone’s. So far Twitter has just released the APIs while Developers have created the most successful Twitter clients. This move will certainly confuse and instill fear in the minds of third party developers as they lose user share to Twitter’s own client. Twitter came out today and tried to calm the fears of Developers.
More commentary here – NYTimes Bits Blog, NYTimes, Techcrunch, Both Sides of the Table
Social Media Demographics: Who’s Using Which Sites?
Interesting infographic on who’s using Social Networking sites.

Are You Ignoring Email Marketing Because of Social Media?
Great article with some good stats on why should you, as a marketer, care about email.

Stats:

• Email marketing returned $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009, and is expected to return $42.08 for every dollar spent on it in 2010.  (Direct Marketing Association)
• 89% of retailers cited email is the most mentioned successful tactic overall.  (Forrester Research and Shop.org’s Retailing Online 2009: Marketing Report)
• 67% of subscribers say they've purchased products offline as a direct result of receiving an email from a retail company.  (Epsilon – 2009 Report)

DigiJives #3 – What’s up with NewsPapers?, Mags Designs on iPad, News site Ad Revenues

Online Content, News Papers etc

What’s up with Newspapers?

A lot of talk on future of newspapers seems to be unfolding with each passing day.  The answer so far seems to be two things (atleast in the recent days):

1. Paywalls - One by one all seems to be going behind paywalls, the models may be different, charges are different. First it was Financial Times and WSJ, then came Newsday (owned by Cablevision) and plans by NYTimes to do the same and now followed by The Times of London and Sunday Times (both operated by News Corp, same as WSJ) which will soon go behind a pay wall in June.
2. iPad to the rescue – Many Newspapers/sites have reported plans to release iPad versions of Newspapers. WSJ for example plans to charge $17.99 a month for iPad edition. Bloomberg reports that WSJ & Times have even sold packages to Advertisers for handsome amounts (atleast in today’s terms).

The Journal, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., has sold four-month ad packages to Coca-Cola Co. and FedEx Corp. for $400,000, the newspaper said, citing the people. Coke and FedEx declined to comment on the terms.

Time Warner Inc.’s Time magazine has signed up advertisers including Toyota Motor Corp., Unilever NV and FMR LLC for single ad spots that cost $200,000, the Journal said.

Will this be enough, we will know soon.

Taking The Tablet: 15 Ways Publishers Are Re-Imagining The Magazine

PaidContent has interesting collection of videos on how Magazine Publishers are beginning to ideate the perfect iPad (or Tablet) Magazine App.

While each takes advantage of the touch screen to, at the least, replicate the tactile experience of flicking through a magazine, visions for the digital mag vary somewhat, coalescing around five key trends…

• Print shovelware: Those that merely recreate the page-turning experience on the digital screen.
• Interactive editions: They’re recognisably a magazine, but navigation and animation really take advantage of what is essentially a screen.
• Motion-heavy mags: Co-produced by film makers, they’re as much a video narrative as a magazine.
• Web shells: Lazy apps that merely funnel through a publication’s existing website.
• Live info: Divorced from monthly print cycle, an article can take advantage of the real-time web.

News site Ad Revenues – Some numbers

There is a great debate going on between Reuters blogger Felix Salmon and Business Insider’s Henry Blodget. You can follow the debate, here, here and here. Anyways, what I wanted to point out was some great Ad Revenu numbers for a general news site.

• Ad revenue for a general news site tend to range from $3-$6 per thousand pages.
• Ad revs for a business or premium site can run $10-$20 per thousand pages.
• For Gossip or general news site, the revenue per thousand pages is far lower.

DigiJives #2 – Twitter’s @anywhere, Highlights from Microsoft Mix event, Mobile Apps Market

Social Networks

Twitter announces @anywhere

Twitter announced to launch a new platform that lets Web publishers display tweets on their sites more broadly and easily than is possible today using Twitter APIs. The new framework called @anywhere, will let Web publishers bring in relevant tweets to their sites by inserting JavaScript code to their websites thus lowering the complexity for integrating Twitter content into external Web pages.

Software

Microsoft Mix – Highlights

Few big news stories breaking out of Microsoft Mix 2010 event.

• Microsoft Corp. showcased advancements in its platform technologies that enable the developer and designer community to deliver compelling user experiences across a broad set of devices using Windows Phone 7 Series platform. Developers will be able to use Microsoft Silverlight and the XNA Framework to build new mobile applications and 3-D Games.
• Microsoft announced a release candidate (RC) for Silverlight 4, available for download today.
• Microsoft also unveiled the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview including expanded support for HTML5, hardware-accelerated graphics and text, and a new JavaScript engine.
• Microsoft is investing resources to contribute to the development of the jQuery JavaScript Library to help improve the development process of standards-based Web applications.

The Silverlight adoption has continued at a rapid pace with installations approaching 60 percent of all Internet devices worldwide — an increase of nearly 15 percentage points in just four months.

Research

Mobile Apps to be $17.5 billion market by 2012

According to a new study which looked at Mobile Apps space across all platforms and on a global basis, the revenue from mobile apps will grow to $17.5 billion by 2012. Currently this stands at $4.1 billion in 2009. This revenue includes both paid downloads and revenue from advertising and virtual goods. Some more stats from the report are as below:

• Mobile app downloads across all types of handsets are expected to increase from more than 7 billion downloads in 2009 to almost 50 billion in 2010 – an annual growth rate of 92 percent.
• The sale of apps will shift from carriers to off-deck sources over the next two years. In 2009, mobile operators accounted for more than 60 percent of all apps revenue, but in 2010, this will fall to under 23 percent.
• In 2009, the number of app stores grew from 8 to 38 – an increase of 375 percent.
• The Average Selling Price (ASP) of only the downloaded apps in 2009 was approximately $1.9 and the advertising revenue generated from the free applications was approximately $0.09/user/app/year.

Get the entire report here (PDF).

DigiJives #1 – Privacy / Instant Ads / Facebook to rule the next web

Starting today, I will be posting small briefs of the stories that catches my attention. I will be publishing these every 2-3 days and eventually the goal would be to publish these daily (not making any promises, history against me :))

Internet Issues

Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity

With great examples from the recent Google Buzz launch and last years Facebook Proivacy setting issues, Danah Boyd in her Keynote at SxSW-Interactive says that Privacy is not dead, just that people need to be in control over their content. When you lose control of your content, you lose privacy. Read the entire Transcript on Danah’s site here.

Marketing and Advertising

NYTimes.com - Instant Ads Set the Pace on the Web

Companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft let advertisers buy ads in the milliseconds between the time someone enters a site’s Web address and the moment the page appears. The technology, called real-time bidding, allows advertisers to examine site visitors one by one and bid to serve them ads almost instantly.

Social Networks

Get ready for a new web. It's big, it's blue, and it's social.

Steve Rubel says Facebook will rule the Web in next decade, so much so that it will become the #1 website in the world in next three years. Some great data points in there,

According to Compete.com, Facebook recently became the top source of traffic to major sites such as Yahoo and MSN, surpassing Google. Hitwise said that Facebook is the fourth leading traffic driver to news sites.

Nielsen reported that in January, U.S. consumers spent a staggering seven hours a month on Facebook -- more than three and a half times the time spent on Yahoo, which ranked second in attention.

Finally, while still tiny compared to Google, search queries on Facebook climbed 13% in January, according to ComScore.

On a lighter note

On a lighter note, "How many Social Media consultants does it take to change a light bulb" - Courtesy – Digital Marketing Inner Circle

None. "Look, if all you're thinking about is changing the light bulb, you're missing the point. The idea is to first lurk around in the room and watch other people changing light bulbs. Then, start providing commentary and encouragement to those that are changing light bulbs. Then, build relationships with these people in the lighting community. Then -- and only then, should you even think about trying to change the light bulb.

Focus of this blog

Have been thinking a lot lately to update this blog. I have managed to maintain this blog for a while now but have not given due focus to share my longer thoughts. The shorter ones gets taken care of by Twitter. Twitter & Facebook has changed a lot of things for me, have become more social (in a much more digital way) and over time I have started using those mechanisms more than any other channels. The blog has taken a backseat amongst these changes. With changing priorities at work, my focus areas have also changed.

So here is what I am going to do. The blog will focus a lot more on my current interests in all things Digital, Social Media and Marketing while Twitter/Facebook is where I am more personal. Stay tuned…

Global Search Market and the Growth of Bing

ComScore reported today on the total search market in December and the growth year on year. There is a total growth of 46% in the past year with US representing the largest search market with 17% of searches. From the ComScore report.

The total worldwide search market boasted more than 131 billion searches conducted by people age 15 or older from home and work locations in December 2009, representing a 46-percent increase in the past year. This number represents more than 4 billion searches per day, 175 million per hour, and 29 million per minute. The U.S. represented the largest individual search market in the world with 22.7 billion searches, or approximately 17 percent of searches conducted globally. China ranked second with 13.3 billion searches, followed by Japan with 9.2 billion and the U.K. with 6.2 billion. Among the top ten global search markets, Russia posted the highest gains in 2009, growing 92 percent to 3.3 billion, followed by France (up 61 percent to 5.4 billion) and Brazil (up 53 percent to 3.8 billion).

One key country missing in the report is India, looks like people are not doing enough search in India.

Google sites account for almost 2/3rd of these searches. But great to see the inroads made by Microsoft based on release of Bing. Microsoft sites saw a growth of 70% as compared to Google’s 58% growth. Cool features like Visual Search (narrow down using controls on left hand side), Recipes are turning the tides for Bing and thus Microsoft. Google is facing the heat and it is evident with this and all such other reports.

Microsoft to Open Retail Stores

Microsoft this week has talked openly about opening Retail Stores and even hired a seasoned Retail exec to lead the effort. From WSJ.com:

Microsoft Corp. said it hired a former Wal-Mart Stores Inc. executive to help the company open its own retail stores, a strategy shift that borrows from the playbook of rival Apple Inc.

The Redmond, Wash., company said it hired David Porter, most recently the head of world-wide product distribution at DreamWorks Animation SKG, as corporate vice president of retail stores for Microsoft.

In a statement, Microsoft said the first priority of Mr. Porter, who is also a 25-year veteran of Wal-Mart, will be to define where to place the Microsoft stores and when to open them. A Microsoft spokesman said the company's current plans are for a "small number" of stores.

Microsoft has been quick to state the purpose of these stores which is to build brand and connect with consumers directly unlike Apple which opened stores more for Distribution (although I think Apple stores drive brand experience the best). Microsoft Pri0 blog had Robbie Bach, head of the Microsoft Entertainment and Devices Division stating the same:

Q: Can you give us your thoughts on moving into retail? You guys have a lot of important partners, especially who resell products from your [Entertainment and Devices Division]...

Bach: "The way you have to put this in context is you have to think of it as just a natural evolution of what's going on in the market and it's a natural evolution of what's going on as we develop our brand.

"And I don't think -- I saw some of the commentary that this was designed to be the same as Apple or whatever. You should think about it, I think, quite differently.

"Apple's approach was about distribution. People forget that when they entered their stores [in 2001], this was quite a while ago, they didn't have distribution for Macintoshes, so they created their own distribution.

"We have plenty of distribution. These stores for us are about building our connection to customers, about building our brand presence and about reaching out and understanding what works and what improves the selling experience.

"So Apple you would think of as a volume distribution play. You should think of ours as much more of a brand and customer relationship investment more than anything else."

My take, this is great news coming from Microsoft. Microsoft few know have a very strong Retail Industry Practice where they have been working with various partners and have just launched the Retail Experience Center which blends, Microsoft's merchandising strategies as a consumer goods company and its solution capabilities as a technology provider for the retail industry.

This knowledge and a proof of concept store means a lot for the Microsoft Retail initiative. Think about the possibilities of Surface tables, Windows 7 with it’s Multi-touch features on big LCDs and Interactive Shopping Carts. Think about Store assistants telling you product features by keeping the product on the table which reads the tags and builds a rich interactive experience on the table. The only thing Microsoft should be wary of and will need is Execution and I am sure Microsoft would be working on that. They would learn from Apple Stores success and apply their own Retail Practice knowledge to make this a killer retail store, something we have so far only dreamt of and seen as Proof of Concepts only.

MSN Wonderwall (and why I like it)

MSN has launched Wonderwall, a site which will pull content from other MSN channels and concentrates on Celebrities and ofcourse gossip.

You can read about the launch in the Microsoft press release or some coverage on All Things Digital and PaidContent. I think PaidContent got it right more than anybody.

Wonderwall exemplifies the latest rage in portal strategy—a site that can stand alone with its own brand while feeding from and feeding into the portal.

 

To most, it looks like MSN is playing catchup. Not so, argues MSN GM Rob Bennett, who contends that Wonderwall provides a single destination for content scattered across MSN, not something completely new. “The reality is a lot of the same content and the same audience is there.” That lack of a single destination is “why it looks like we’re further behind than we probably are.” Bennett expects the promotional power of MSN to help Wonderwall catch up fast: ” I think when we turn the firehose on in different places; it’s going to be a close race.” MSN also has an off-network campaign in the works.

Which is exactly what it is, a strategy to push content from and to MSN and in a way which creates value for Users (central place for all celebrity news/gossip) and Advertisers (more targetable audience at the same place). MSN has great content and if they are able to mix it well with programming and keep it fresh (and they have help in the form of BermanBraun), they will have a winner. One look at the site and you can see the enormous advertising opportunities the site provides. And as far as I understand, users and Advertisers love such stuff. For each click on the celebrity photograph on the wall you have one opportunity to show highly targetable ad. Throw in some research surveys and analysis and the site brings more value to the advertisers.

Good Job MSN.

The Establishment blocks Facebook & MySpace

Guess Politicians are the same everywhere. I have every reason to say, this is India 2012-2015 when our own politicians will hopefully have Facebook profiles :). 

Now Social Networking sites need to worry not just about competition but THE Establishment too.

Maryland General Assembly Blocks Facebook, MySpace

"With the beginning of the 2009 Legislative Session, we have observed a significant increase in viruses and malware affecting the Maryland General Assembly computers," the Office of Legislative Information Systems Director Michael Gaudiello wrote to staff on Thursday, according to Legum's New Line. "After several weeks of analysis, we have determined that many of the infecting programs are originating from pages hosted on www.facebook.com and www.myspace.com."

That's not all. The IT department intends to continue its investigation and ban other sites determined to be "problematic."

Has Gaudiello ever heard of anti-virus software? Banning Facebook and MySpace clearly doesn't solve the problem of viruses, as many, many sites can install malware. And, clearly, many lawmakers find social networking sites useful for spreading messages to the people they represent.

Back from Blog hiatus

Notwithstanding, I have not been able to blog here for quite some time. Have been busy at work mostly. Lots of interesting things happening at work and that has been taking most of my time. Anyways, am rethinking on how to take this blog forward. At work a lot of what I am engaged in these days involves Media related work so you will see a lot of Media related posts too. As always, a considerable amount of will be on Microsoft, Google and other online, media companies. Have said the following words many times before too, I hope and wish this time for good.

Stay tuned…

Failed Opportunity – An example

Talking of failed opportunities, I read this news on NYTimes of a new Website called Cookstr. Cookstr plans to “showcase the recipes of star chefs like Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson and Mario Batali, as well as those of less-well-known but highly regarded cookbook writers. The idea, ultimately, is to sell copies of these authors’ books”.

Now this news appeared on the NYTimes which had 20 M Unique Users in September. Anyone would have kept their site ready for the traffic the news will bring to their site and they could have 1000’s (even millions) of conversions just because of this coverage. But Not Cookstr. While the news article does say, that the site will go live this month, you would assume that Cookstr would have done their research on NYTimes readership and would have been ready to showcase their new site to millions of readers. This is what you see when you are taken to the website.

Now, my dear readers (yes the two of you) that’s a classic example of Failed Opportunity.

Another reason to use Live.com

While the Live Search has improved drastically in the past few months, Microsoft now has one more reason to have more people using Live Search. The photographs from Olympics (available in US and few other countries only at this time). The images are amazing and very well placed.

Starbucks Economics

[via Aplia Econ Blog]

Rather old article, but nonetheless fascinating if you are interested in Economics.

Starbucks Economics - Solving the mystery of the elusive "short" cappuccino.