Mark Kolier’s Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

When I view the home page on Twitter I always take a peek at what topics are ‘trending’. It’s often the quickest way to find out what people are talking about. Of course what people talk about can be amazingly trivial and uninteresting.

Take a look. Right now I just peeked and saw Chad Pennington (a Quarterback for the Miami Dolphins), apparently tore his ACL playing off-season basketball. One comment on the oft-injured QB was that even without football he can find a way to put himself on injured reserve. Earlier this week there was a trending topic ‘RIP Jackie Chan’. I took a quick scroll down the list and many people were aghast that the news (totally untrue) was shocking but most people did not believe it.

GoDaddy’s CEO Bob Parsons was also a trending topic today – he posted a video of he and some team members on safari in Africa shooting and killing an elephant, the elephant was alleged to have been trampling a sorghum field thus impoverishing local farmers and causing starvation. This will no doubt be all over the news in the next few days with people calling for boycotts of GoDaddy.com.

What makes a trending topic? Obviously the things that people are tweeting about. And (by some counts) with more than 100 million Twitter users that’s a pretty large sample (granted most users actually tweet rarely). So what makes a trending topic is having a substantial number of people Tweet about something that they find interesting and want their followers to see. You can select trending topics to be segmented by country, or even by city. Take a look at what’s trending in Brazil or Turkey for example.

Not all of the trending topics are trivial however. I first saw the news of the tsunami in Japan as a trending topic on Twitter. I immediately searched for more news. The speed at which people tweet an event is mind-boggling at times. I can’t imagine being that plugged into everything that is going on that I would be able to (or want to) be an early tweeter of what will be a trending event.

At the same time trending topics on Twitter do act as a representation of some collective consciousness of what people are thinking about. I find that very interesting and I am betting it will get even more interesting as more people jump into the Tweetstream.

Non-social media users like to make fun of Twitter and readily admit that they don’t get it, and don’t have time for what they consider to be nonsense. As a marketing guy I find the maturation of Twitter and Twitterites (it would be good to settle on one name for those that Tweet I admit) to be a good study of the way human beings interact as well as how communications are evolving.

And I am somewhat relieved but sad to learn that they caught the missing Bronx Zoo Cobra – who which by the way has more than 200,000 followers. And many of the tweets from the @bronxzoocobra were both clever and hilarious. It’s good to laugh at work sometimes.

If you’ve been paying rapt attention to the social media space, then perhaps you are aware of www.Klout.com and/or www.Twitalyzer.com (I was aware of the former but not the latter). The sites offer you a measure of your social ‘influence’. That is to say that based on a person’s publicly posted data on sites like Twitter, your measure of social influence is derived and scored.

Other social influence measuring sites exist like www.Peerindex.com and www.Topvoice.com as well. (Full disclosure – I have met the CEO of Top Voice and the Chairwoman is a business associate and friend).
In an article in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal http://on.wsj.com/hZoFDb a 25 year old woman was given access to a ‘swanky holiday party’ on the basis of her tweets being ‘influential’. The woman was surprised. That would not have been my reaction but I’m far from being 25 years old.

I became aware of Klout several months ago and signed up for an account (my Klout score is a lowly 32 – even Hosni Mubarak has me beat at a 43). 70 is considered a pretty good Klout score and Justin Bieber has a Klout score of 100 (Bill Gates has a score of 76 BTW – I myself don’t find Bill Gates to be less influential than Justin Bieber but hey that’s me).

So the next question is (at least for this marketer) – “Where’s the revenue model?” While the WSJ article does not outline the revenue model , theoretically by using Klout consumer brands could reach out to top influencers by having them talk about the brand – positive or (dare it be), negative. Maybe it could work and I am probably missing something so help me out if you have a better idea.

Top Voice is also a new entry and they are working through the challenges of being a start up with regard to interface and site usability. I understand the Top Voice revenue model much better than that of Klout. People Tweet or post about their favorite brands and are rewarded with points which can then lead to them receiving merchandise for becoming a Top Voice influencer. So both the brands and the individual can benefit.

Social media influence is here to stay whether people want to accept that is important or not. Even if you personally feel it is a waste of time (as I often do) we marketers should be very aware and watchful of trends and developments. The authenticity of conversations from consumers will continue to gain traction.

So have you checked out your Klout? Will you?

Yesterday in Kara Swisher’s allthingsd.com blog http://bit.ly/e5QFen it came out the LinkedIn.com will likely file an S-1 for an IPO. This was confirmed late Thursday – http://nyti.ms/hZTvLp . Some interesting stats from the article were that LinkedIn has more than 90 million members in over 200 countries and territories. It has 1,000 full time employees. Also Sequoia Capital is involved and they are not often associated with IPO rumors.

The idea that LinkedIn could be worth more than $ 2 billion actually was surprising to me as I thought it would be higher. After all Facebook was valued at more than $ 50 billion (25 times more than LinkedIn) but LinkedIn has fewer than 7 times as many members. Part of the reason is that LinkedIn members are not nearly as consumer-ish and buying oriented as those on Facebook.

I’m a big proponent of LinkedIn as I have noted on my blog in the past in two separate posts, http://bit.ly/f1v1HU and http://bit.ly/grhp8R . Since more and more people are using LinkedIn it gains value for its subscribers every day. While I use the paid version that offers more access, the free version is useful all the same even though the folks at LinkedIn will surely find a way to gain more paid subscribers for obvious reasons.

I have a Plaxo.com account as well, although I almost never use it. Occasionally Plaxo will send me an email with updates but I pretty much ignore them entirely. Why would I need two accounts that have similar missions when LinkedIn is much more utilized and simply better? I suspect Plaxo will be toast before long.
LinkedIn does sell advertising and the model is a sound one. You can advertise to specific groups by purchasing display ads. The advertising CPM’s are surprisingly expensive but that market has been created on demand so I am certain that if they did not perform for advertisers the rates would or will drop.
From Computerworld.com and Sharon Gaudin January 6, “LinkedIn would be the first social networking company to go public and it will be a good test of how valuable these companies might be,” said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. “While LinkedIn isn’t Facebook or Twitter, they do have something like 85 million users and a business plan that is at least as developed, or hazy, depending on your perspective, as those at Facebook and Twitter.”

So LinkedIn being the first social network to go public would be something of a coup particularly in view of all the noise made by Facebook’s on again off again IPO news. I hope it will not end up being a Jeopardy answer years from now – ‘The first social network to go public’.

If you are in business you should be on LinkedIn and use it all the time. If you are not on LinkedIn I’d love to know why (because I have a hard time understanding that).

This one will be a winner I think. What do you think?

I will start by noting that I like Alicia Keys’ music and whole vibe actually. I respect Lady Gaga as a premiere performer who really gets in touch with her audience.

So why was I shaking my head when I read that both Ms. Keys and Lady Gaga (can she be Ms. Gaga?), are going to turn off Twitter and Facebook for World Aids Day this Wednesday December 1? They are going to publicize their ‘digital deaths’ in a campaign labeled ‘Digital Life Sacrifice’.

From NBC Philadelphia –
”Don’t expect any Facebook or Twitter updates from Lady Gaga and Alicia Keys on Wednesday. They’re taking a break from social networking for an important cause. The two are among the many celebrities who will log off from social media platforms on World AIDS Day as part of the Digital Life Sacrifice campaign, The Associated Press reported. The campaign will benefit Keys’ charitable organization; Keep a Child Alive, which helps families impacted by HIV/AIDS.

Among the other celebs who are taking part in the campaign are Ryan Seacrest, Kim Kardashian, Serena Williams and Jennifer Hudson. Their “last tweet and testament” videos were shot and will be used in advertisements to symbolize what the initiative characterizes as digital deaths.

The celebs will log back into their social media accounts when Keep a Child Alive achieves its $1 million fundraising goal. The charity was started almost a decade ago with Keys serving as its first Global Ambassador.“

The premise here is that people will be ‘shocked’ into greater awareness over the AIDS crisis by not being able to get updates on their favorite stars on Twitter or Facebook. OK so here’s my question: The seriousness of the AIDS epidemic, (and it is indeed an epidemic) is just that – serious. Does the denial by celebrities of Tweets and Facebook updates sound serious to you? And is this going to motivate people to donate money to the cause so that their favorite stars will start those updates coming as soon as possible? Is this a big sacrifice for stars to halt their tweeting and updating their everyday life events and thoughts?

To me it sounds a bit like the celebs are really saying –”Great we will be able to take a vacation for however long on the inane items we post to our fans and followers until they pony up the cash.” Is that possibly an extortion-like threat under the auspice of doing ‘good’?

I don’t get it folks. It sounds noble but smells bad to me. Agree? Disagree?

Even before I read the article in today’s New York Times (http://nyti.ms/aQ9oKV) I had some knowledge of Tumblr – www.tumblr.com. Yes I signed up. No I’m not exactly sure why.

A blogging service based in NYC, Tumblr claims to want to (in the words of journalist Mark Coatney) occupy ‘a space in between Twitter and Facebook’.

Personally I have difficulty seeing how big that space might be. The 24 year old founder David Karp notes that Tumblr is not all about followers (well that’s a relief). What I like about Tumblr is that it offers a like for publications to truly interact with their readers in a way that Facebook and Twitter do not. Tumblr requires publishers to add commentary in order to gain favor with its ‘community’.

Here’s what is even more interesting. Somehow Tumblr – which still does not have a business model, recently raised $ 5 million from Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures. This apparently (according to President John Maloney) offers some validation. Ya think?

As the American and world business climate today remains choppy and challenging it’s more than difficult for companies, even like ours, to obtain adequate financing for expansion, hiring and working capital. That VC firms would throw up a combined $ 5 million to a firm without a business revenue is evidence that despite all the talk of fiscal prudence, as long as there is the chance to make a fast buck, caution can and will be thrown to the wind and the speculators will continue to do what they have always done.

I am all for on the edge new ideas and new businesses. But Twitter still has not shown the ability to make any money (in contrast to Facebook) and much more money has gone into Twitter than $ 5 million. Maybe Twitter will get there but the jury is still way out as far as I am concerned.

Do you think you would get financing for coming up with an idea that had no decided revenue model?