Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: The fickle Twitterer. « The unripened word | Main | Tim writes a book » April 28, 2009 The biggest crowd on the web today is the one streaming through Twitter's entryway. The second biggest crowd on the web today is the one streaming through Twitter's exit. Twitter's recent growth has been explosive, even by web standards. But a whirl does not a relationship make. Currently, more than 60 percent of Twitter users fail to return the following month, or in other words, Twitter’s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent. Even Oprah, it seems, may already be losing interest. The half-life of a microblog, it turns out, is even briefer than the half-life of a blog. When MySpace and Facebook were at the stage that Twitter is at today, their retention rates were, according to Nielsen, twice as high - and they've now stabilized at nearly 70 percent.
If the numbers do account for that, I agree with the concern. Post a comment. Finding Utility in the Jumble of Tweeted Thoughts. 16 Examples of Huge Brands Using Twitter for Business. Commuter Feed Uses Twitter for Localized Traffic Reports - ReadW. Twitter was originally designed as an app that would allow people to share information about what they were doing within a distributed group setting.
It's something akin to a collection of automatically forming email discussion lists (except not via email). The benefit of this is that people can receive and send information within a group very quickly. That's why Twitter has become such an important source of breaking news, and it's also why helpful consumer information apps like Commuter Feed are possible. Last month, we talked about why Twitter is evolving into a great platform for the dissemination of breaking news stories.
It is the distributed nature of Twitter that makes it such a powerful tool for citizen journalism. Commuter Feed, which launched last week, is a Twitter mashup that plays off the distributed nature of the app to aggregate traffic reports. As Webware's Josh Lowensohn notes, Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo! Member of the Twittering classes | Technology. You might not consider Labour deputy leadership contender Alan Johnson the most likely person to embrace the latest social networking trend.
But according to his campaign team, Johnson is not only the first UK politician to be sending out Twitter updates, he was nearly the first in the world. "I had the idea for Alan to use Twitter back at the start of January, long before John Edwards started to use it for his [US] presidential bid," says Stuart Bruce, Johnson's head of PR. "Unfortunately, he started before we were ready. " So how does Johnson fit in among the 8m "tweets" (short Twitter messages) sent worldwide so far?
At the time of writing, twitter.com/johnson4deputy reports the last time he update he was "Heading off to Leeds after a really successful campaign launch. 65 PLP [Parliamentary Labour Party] supporters already declared ... " You can almost hear the bandwagon rolling. 21st century PR But why? He acknowledges that Twitter can become an irritation. Microblogging. 10 Examples of Creative Twitter Uses | Houston Search Engine Mar. When you think of Twitter, you probably think of a microblogging tool that helps you connect with friends across the world. But not every Tweeter uses their account just to chat back and forth with their online friends. Some have come up with truly creative ways to use their account.
What follows is a list of the 10 most creative uses of Twitter I’ve seen. 1. Laundryroom- The laundry room Twitter account helps residents at Olin College’s West Hall check on the availability of washing machines at the campus Laundromat. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Bonus Tip: For best results make your Twitter account shine with a custom Twitter background from PimpMyTwitter.net Have you seen any examples of creative Twitter accounts? Similar Posts: Eric Brantner Eric Brantner is a copywriter who is obsessed with getting conversions. More Posts - Website Follow Me: Twingly Launches Microblogging Search Engine. Twitter and Yammer Test Dot-Com Business Models. Is the Enterprise Ready for Microblogging Tools Like Twitter? - By Aaron Strout and Joe Cascio Although experts in the social media space have been talking about how businesses might adopt microblogging tools like Twitter and Plurk, only recently have we started to see a series of new vendors cropping up in the enterprise microblogging space.
This has been due in part to businesses needing to figure out how Twitter can benefit the enterprise. The fact that the mainstream press has started covering this topic has also helped to push things along (see Businessweek's CEO Guide to Microblogging if you need proof). Given the recent focus on business microblogging and the emergence of some new players like Yammer and Utterli (Formerly Utterz, Utterli has been around for a little over a year but just rebranded and is now becoming more enterprise-centric), it felt like as good a time as any to write a post about the business value of microsharing within the enterprise.
Just to level set, it probably doesn't hurt to define what microblogging is. Yammer: A 'Twitter for the enterprise' | Webware : Coo. I recently covered Socialcast , a "Friendfeed for business," and liked it a lot. It takes emerging social interaction models that people are just now getting accustomed to and adapts them for business. Here at TechCrunch50, the idea is also in evidence with Yammer, more of a "Twitter for business" than Socialcast, since it doesn't seem to be able to pull in external feeds the same way. However, users can have threaded discussions, as they can on FriendFeed. Users can also use "hashtags" for tagging topics, and they can follow just those tags. Useful if you want to follow a project, but not necessarily all the people working on it.
Yammer will launch with a desktop AIR app, as well as iPhone and BlackBerry apps, and an SMS interface. The base product is free.