(A) Buzz About (A) Buy (on Twitter)
A lot of those close to Twitter are now saying that their monetization scheme is to capitalize on its WOM power and make it easy for people to buy the products that their followers talk about. Couple of comments about that.
First, people tend not to mind adverts on Twitter. Maybe it’s because they are forced to ‘sell’ in 140 characters or less and short and snappy ads are less annoying than the more traditional online display ads. Maybe it is because it’s more of an impersonal broadcast medium, where the expectations are that adverts are acceptable (like they are on any other broadcast platform), whereas on Facebook and some of the more friend-centric social platforms, ads are regarded as an intrusion. And, since most people don’t have a lot of followers on Twitter and don’t Tweet all that much anyway, the volume of adverts that people get isn’t overwhelming.
But then again, that could be the double edge. If there aren’t a lot of people with a lot of followers, it may be hard to predict how lucrative a buy platform might be.
But, for now, it is a good story. And let’s hope that they’re serious about recognizing the need for a biz model that moves beyond advertising – and that their focus is on cold hard cash and not the “virtual” currencies that the other networks seem enamored with. Now, wouldn’t it be funny if Twitter actually scooped the networks on a payment solution? That might be something to Tweet and reTweet…
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Digital Media, Ad-Supported, New Business Models, Technology, Social Networks, consumers, Web 2.0, Internet, advertising
Call me a skeptic on this one Karen. Asking for product advice from a bunch of people I don’t know (my followers) doesn’t make much sense to me. There are so many resources already on the web; from technology product reviews to consumer recommendations, etc; that I don’t see how Twitter gets into the game. Even if they can play a role in the consumer’s information gathering process, there doesn’t seem to be a clear path to translate that into buying through a Twitter or a link from Twitter. Really hard to drive volume as you point out.
I see similar challenges with the communities of interest idea; there are already communities of interest propping up spontaneously. Check out www.venturemaven.com as an example. One of the challenges of being an open platform is that anyone can build an application on top of you. Hard for them to pull this back and bring it in-house; once the genie is out of the bottle, you can’t put it back in.