Twitter: media company or platform? « Internet. Is Twitter a technology platform, a media company — or both? With Twitter’s recent moves pointing toward “media company,” there is a growing concern among technologists that a trend for greater content control will compromise both innovation and Twitter’s future in favor of short-term profits. The days of fledging start-up are gone for six-year-old Twitter, which is now a major player in the big battles shaping the future of the Internet.
With over $1 billion in investment, it has backers looking for an IPO payday — an environment that demands more than trumpeting a nifty communications protocol. The most recent dust-up arose after a top executive announced in late June that the company would soon introduce “stricter guidelines” around how independent developers may build applications on top of Twitter. Around the same time, the social networking service LinkedIn disclosed that it no longer had permission to include Twitter streams.
“We’re not a media company” The past as prologue? Twitter is building a media business using other people’s content. As Twitter continues to build out new features such as “expanded tweets” and curation-based services like its NASCAR editorial offering, it has become pretty obvious where the company is headed: it has given up on being a utility built on open APIs and is becoming a media company, powered by a rapidly-growing advertising platform. Twitter also has one big advantage that other media companies don’t: the fact that it doesn’t have to produce any of the content, but simply acts as a filter for information from other sources.
Its success will be determined by how well it strikes a balance between helping other media entities and competing with them. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has repeatedly resisted suggestions that Twitter is a media entity, perhaps in part because the company wants to be seen as a partner for traditional media companies like newspapers and TV networks. Twitter’s future lies in capturing more user attention Send users away, or try to keep them inside your app? L'ascension fulgurante de Twitter en 1 image. Why A TweetDeck Acquisition Could Stink For The Users. Last month, rumors hit the Web that TweetDeck, the multi-columned, much-preferred desktop client of hardcore users, had been acquired by Twitter. Today, TechCrunch is reporting that the deal has gone through, with Twitter snapping up the company for $40 to $50 million.
While we don't want to be melodramatic, we're afraid that this deal could be the beginning of the end and here's why. TweetDeck, It Was Nice To Know You... The first, and most surface-level concern, is that Twitter will simply buy TweetDeck and shut it down. In March, Twitter director of platform Ryan Sarver advised developers to quit building clients, as this was an area that the company intended on moving into in an effort to give users a uniform experience.
Where Art Thou, Facebook & LinkedIn Integration? TweetDeck goes beyond Twitter, allowing users to track their Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Myspace and Google Buzz accounts all on one dashboard. Right. A N00bified TweetDeck Wouldn't Be TweetDeck at All. Twitter Ads to Be Based on Knowing Who You Follow, What You Like.
Twitter's soon tweaking its "promoted tweets" to use info about the people you follow for targeted ads. It's a case of brand new tech applying an age-old marketing trick, and it just might work. What does Twitter have as a secret jewel at its core, apart from its huge stream of personal observations, thoughts, news items, embedded links, and images in its largely public feeds? The intricate network of who you follow on Twitter, and who they follow and so on--exactly the same core value that lies inside Facebook. Twitter's now about to leverage this network to improve its months-old Promoted Tweet program, because it contains a rich amount of information.
For example, it doesn't take much data mining in order to work out some of your interests by looking at common words you tweet, or frequently used phrases among your social network. All you'd need is a clever word- and link-hunting algorithm. [Image via Flickr user sidewalk_flying]. Like Facebook, Twitter Starts Using Algorithms To Bulk Up Social Graph. Last month, we noted that Twitter was testing a “You both follow” feature, showing users you and another user both follow. That’s interesting, but not particularly useful. Today, they’ve begun to roll out a new “Suggestions for You” feature which looks at who you follow, and who the people you follow follow, and suggests new people for you to follow.
Yes, just like Facebook does. This is very useful. In fact, this is arguably the most useful social graph feature that Twitter has rolled out yet. Such a feature would be less interesting if it were only tucked away in the “Find People” area of the site. In terms of how they determine these suggestions, Twitter says: The algorithms in this feature, built by our user relevance team, suggest people you don’t currently follow that you may find interesting. [thanks Tyler] DOCUMENTAIRE TWITTER - BLOOMBERG VIDÉO | SITE GEEK et HIGH-TECH NWE. Twitter Trouble: Rashard Mendenhall, Nir Rosen, and Keith Olbermann's difficulties with the new medium. - By Jack Shafer. Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall lost his endorsement deal from Champion sports apparel last week for tweeting his doubts that the World Trade Center towers were brought down by hijacked jetliners and for expressing his sentiments that we had "only heard one side" of the Osama Bin Laden story.
Mendenhall quickly backed off from the pair of tweets. He deleted the 9/11 remark and published a blog post explaining that he wasn't a Bin Laden supporter. But it was too late. He had already joined the ranks of high-profile users who've been burned by microblogging. Keith Olbermann previously stepped in it with a tweet stating that conservative commentator S.E. Comedian Gilbert Gottfried lost his Aflac gig when he directed his dark humor at the Japanese tsunami. Yet, none of these tweeters should have been surprised that their tweets got them in trouble. But if Facebook is any guide, those Twitter taboos will probably fall. Maybe we've already reached that point. The Twitter Effect Isn't What Hollywood Thought | TheWrap.com. The Twitter Effect. The term entered the lexicon last summer after Universal’s Sacha Baron Cohen comedy “Bruno” tumbled more than 36 percent in its first 24 hours in theaters.
One year later, the social media trend that was going to revolutionize word-of-mouth hasn't demonstrably done so. There are few movies this summer where you can point to Twitter causing a huge box office bump, or drop. Unlike 2009. Last year produced a number of huge opening-Friday-to-Saturday dips and spikes, including Warner's "The Blind Side" (up nearly 25 percent). And studio executives that were scrambling to catch up with the phenomenon have instead decided that it’s easier to put their money where the tweets might be — and buy “trending terms” on the service.
Meanwhile it's social media as a whole, rather than one little blue bird, that is changing the way Hollywood sells its films. “A bad film is a bad film,” said Gordon Paddison, a former New Line marketing executive, now an independent consultant. This Is What Twitter Commerce Might Look Like. Yahoo Scientist Questions ROI of Kardashian's Sponsored Tweets - Advertising Age - Special Report: Digital Conference 2010.
Twitter poursuit son évolution pour devenir un média. Saviez-vous que Twitter venait de fêter son sixième anniversaire ? Six ans, c’est à la fois beaucoup et peu. Suffisamment pour consolider une base de 150 M d’utilisateurs actifs (pour presque 500M de comptes créés) et une activité en perpétuelle croissance qui atteint maintenant 400 millions de tweets publiés par jours. En terme de rentabilité, ils ne communiquent pas beaucoup sur leurs résultats, mais certains estiment que le service pourrait générer 1 milliard de $ de C.A. d’ici deux ans (Twitter could reach $1B in revenue by 2014). Pour résumer une longue histoire, Twitter est une authentique réussite, la meilleure preuve de cette réussite est que le service a été pratiquement cloné (avec succès) en Chine : Sina Weibo Breaks 300 Million Registered Users, Mobile Users Growing.
Encore plus intéressant, le service commencerait à séduire des tranches de population lassées par Facebook : Les adolescents français migrent vers Twitter. Des pratiques bien spécifiques de social marketing. Tuenti looks like it will go to Telefonica for $99 million. Back in May we reported a rumor that Telefonica was in talks to acquire Tuenti, the ‘Spanish Facebook’, for €80 million” ($104 million).
At least that was the buzz around the Spanish blogosphere. Tuenti vehemently denied it at the time but it looks like the bloggers were right. According to Spanish news site Expansion, the two sides have “virtually sealed the deal” whereby Telefonica will take 90% of the share capital of Tuenti, valuing the company at around €75 million or close to $99 million. In October 2008, Qualitas Equity Partners paid €9.5 million for 17% of Tuenti, which valued it at €55.88 million.
There is further confirmation from Martin Varsavsky, founder of FON who has been informally advising the company, who repeats the Expansion story and adds that “all shareholders of Tuenti but management sold all their shares to Telefonica.” He also says Tuenti will remained independent. The transaction makes sense. Status.net Gets $1.4M to Take Open-Source Twitter Into the Enterprise. Alert The Enterprise: Seesmic Integrates With Salesforce Chatter. How businesses and brands deal with social media has become one of the defining issues of the recent web era. Today a pretty big leap is taking place which may define the next phase. Two of the biggest players have come together to create certainly one of the slickest and most seamless integrations I’ve yet seen of the realtime social web and enterprise worlds. Seesmic is to integrate Salesforce’s internal Twitter-like app, Chatter, into their platform. That makes Seesmic the first realtime social consumer app to go directly into the enterprise space.
Seesmic will also suddenly have the potential to access to over 20,000 Salesforce customers who have used Chatter so far. The news was unveiled at a 3,000-strong Salesforce conference in London today. Once you see Seesmic working with Salesforce’s Chatter it make perfect sense. It’s clear this is part of a long term strategic partnership between the two companies, and the rapport between the two CEOs is evident.