Twitter is as hot as Facebook these days, we hear about these new (or not so new) things and wonder how they've taken off and how they will evolve and become part of our everyday life. I don’t think anybody has it all figured out yet. That’s part of the fun.
It is reasonable to expect that in the 18 months new tools will replace some of the first movers. Twitter’s problems as we all know, they are not the only social tool to have it only half-right. Will Twitter be the Friendster of microblogging? As the power of the network becomes the utility of the network and each one is working to find its place in the social media ecosystem, LinkedIn for jobs and resume, MySpace for music and pop culture, Facebook for friends and Twitter for life-streaming.
But what does it mean for organizations? Take a look at Dell’s $1 Million Twitter Strategy. Dell reported that their Twitter account has generated over $1 million in revenue over the past year and a half through sale alerts. All of this, without paying a dime for their accounts. Do we call it Social Spamming? Dell actually has 19 English speaking Twitter accounts, each targeting a different community ranging from support to community to deals. At most these accounts have drawn over 7,000 followers, lots of overlap I suspect.
CEOs and CMOs are getting into the bandwagon. Notable tweeting CMOs include Jeffrey Hayzlett of Kodak (@jeffreyhayzlett) and Barry Judge of Best Buy (@BestBuyCMO), each of whom ties his account closely to their brands. And each interprets the boundaries between the personal voice and the voice of the brand a bit differently. Of course, each brand has different social-media agendas that these executives are trying to push forward with variables ranging from the brands themselves and the strategic objectives to the target audiences they serve and the styles of these individuals. Both are using Twitter for strategic reasons.
Dell also drives conversations with their power user customers through an integrated blogging and advertising campaign called Digital Nomads. So segmentation is still valid. Messaging is still important. And you still need an offer (customer proposition). For Twitter, the question is still where is the money? A report from Credit Suisse speculated that Google’s YouTube video sharing site could be on track to lose approximately $470 mm in 2009. Google paid $1.76billion for something that continue to lose almost $470mm a year. Market share is 41% of US online video watching, does it mean something? Not only Twitter needs a strategy, even YouTube needs one. You cannot charge people for user-generated content which makes up the lion’s share of the video library. The other option is to charge content providers that are not consumers.
Twitter is still twittering away with more and more people using it creatively. Take Malaria No More as an example, Ashton Kutcher turned a friendly media rivalry into a greater good when he offered to donate 10,000 mosquito nets to Malaria No More if he won the challenge of gaining more twitter followers than CNN by Thurs April 16 midnight. Yes Twitter can be used to save the world. CNN was quick to respond and matched Ashton’s offer as he achieved the million follower mark first. The power of Twitter. It is by far the most important social networking trend for 2009, and has the potential to be larger than Facebook in terms of numbers of users multiplied by numbers of messages read or sent. Whatever you thought you knew about Twitter 6 weeks ago may already be out of date. Watch this space.
