Key Stats Show Slump In Twitter Use
- Posted by Andy Beal in MAKE MONEY ONLINE, WEBSITE SEO |
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Here’s are some metrics that should concern those inside of Twitter:
- The number of new users per month is down 20% since its peak in July 2009.
- The average Twitter user has just 27 followers, down from a peak of 42
- 80% of Twitter users have tweeted fewer than 10 times
- The percent of active Twitter users is down to just 17%
The data comes from RJMetrics, which analyzed 2 million tweets from about 50,000 users. You could argue that no data is accurate, unless it comes from Twitter itself, but isn’t it interesting that we never see any of these numbers come from Twitter? You’d think that if the real numbers were more encouraging, Twitter would issue a “State of the Twittersphere”–similar to Technorati’s state of the blogosphere report.
If these numbers are accurate, it shesd some light on why Twitter has chosen to find revenue from Google and Bing, before monetizing its user base. The user base is simply not active enough to generate any significant revenue!
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Twitter Not Ready For IPO Fortunes
- Posted by Andy Beal in MAKE MONEY ONLINE, WEBSITE SEO |
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"We’ve raised all this money. We’ve created this global brand…Now we have to go build the business that lives up to that valuation."
Twitter COO, Dick Costolo, January 20, 2010
And that, my friend, is why we won’t see a Twitter IPO this year. That, and this really obscure New Yorker reference:
“My view of our financial future is like that old New Yorker cover where the New Yorker looks at the view of the United States and the IPO is way out west somewhere,” Costolo said yesterday during a panel discussion at Bloomberg’s San Francisco bureau. “Bronx and Queens are our 2010 financial plan, and that’s what we’re focused on right now.”
You could argue, that Twitter needs to be closer to Madison Avenue than the Bronx, but I think we all get his point–Twitter’s just not ready to head west and make its fortunes in an IPO.
Aside from figuring out how exactly it plans to generate revenue, the other monkey on its back isn’t actually a monkey at all–it’s a whale!
The company really needs to figure out how to avoid such random outages. A few of these immediately prior to an IPO, and it won’t be just whales that are sinking–Twitter’s opening-day valuation won’t be able to tread-water either!
Star Trek Online Has People Tweeting In Klingon
- Posted by Andy Beal in MAKE MONEY ONLINE, WEBSITE SEO |
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Twitter…the final frontier. These are the voyages of game-maker Atari. Its 2-month mission: to explore strange new social networks, to seek out new geeks and new game players, to boldly go where no ad campaign has gone before!
[Cue intro]
If you’re a Trekkie, you’re probably already well aware of the pending February 2nd launch of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) "Star Trek Online." Well, according to ClickZ, its creator, Atari Inc., has decided to reach those that don’t quite go as far as greeting each other with "Live Long and Prosper," by launching a number of social media initiatives to promote the game.
YouTube, Facebook, and secret access codes on game sites, have all been part of Atari’s marketing efforts, but my favorite has to be its Twitter strategy:
For Twitter, the New York-based company has created a microsite-app combo, dubbed "Tweet in Klingon," that allows viewers to type English phrases and have them tweeted in fictional Klingon language.
And you thought Foursquare updates were annoying. Wait ’til people realize they can start tweeting in Klingon. Better yet, they start updating their Foursquare status in Klingon. Race ya to become the Mayor of Adigeon Prime! 
Employee Fired From American Airlines For Transparent Email
- Posted by Andy Beal in MAKE MONEY ONLINE, WEBSITE SEO |
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What is it with airlines?
If they’re not breaking guitars, their pilots are missing airports, or they’re berating people that are trying to help them.
Well, we have one more reputation disaster to add to the list, courtesy of American Airlines.
You may recall the open letter web designer Dusting Curtis wrote to the airline. In it, Curtis suggested that AA was losing millions because of its poorly designed web site. He even went as far as suggesting a new design for the site.
Shortly after, one of AA’s designers took it upon himself to reply and explain the complexities of AA web site design decisions. His reply was open, honest…radically transparent.
American Airlines has allegedly fired him for it!
This may have happened back in May, but it’s only just come to light that the AA designer was apparently fired an hour after he wrote his reply.
AA searched their exchange database for the text I posted, found the guy, and fired Mr. X on the spot. From what I have learned, they also threatened him with legal action if he spoke to me again. Apparently he broke his non-disclosure agreement by discussing the design process at AA.
OK, so maybe he shouldn’t have broken his NDA with the airline. But, maybe AA shouldn’t have been so near-sighted and pedantic about its employee policies. Surely the airline is aware that it’s industry hardly has the best reputation for caring about its customers. Heck, even Jet Blue–the poster child of airline awesomeness–has screwed-up royally in the past.
In some ways, you can’t blame American Airlines. It is completely ignorant of how customers want to interact with the airline. We don’t want to hand flight attendants slips of paper that say “well done”–something AA encourages me to do as a frequent flier–we want to engage with the airline. We want it to do better, and we have ideas. Ideas about clean blankets, baggage fees, and yes, web site design. How does AA marry its apparent openness on Twitter, with this crackdown on a real employee that wants to help?
Yes, you should have guidelines in place, but those guidelines should be designed to encourage thoughtful customer interaction, not prevent it! If we hear that you’re firing employees because of their transparency, how are we supposed to take your official social networking efforts seriously? What, do we now assume that everything that is shared on Twitter or Facebook is nothing more than sterile, PR sanctioned, sound bites?
The airline industry may well be the very last to “get” the concept of Radically Transparent. When they do finally have that “aha!” moment, we’ll know that we’ve finally entered the age of open, honest, dialogs.
Andy Beal – AA Platinum Card Holder; Million Mile Flier.
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AOL and Time Warner Officially Splitting Up
- Posted by Andy Beal in MAKE MONEY ONLINE, WEBSITE SEO |
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Sometimes, what looks like it will be as tasty as chocolate and peanut butter, ends up tasting more like pickles and ice cream. Nothing matches that last culinary disaster better than the merger of AOL and Time Warner.
Well, on December 9th, that union will be no more.
You can read the wordy Time Warner press release, but you’ll probably either fall asleep or your head will explode, before you reach the end. Instead, we’ll turn to trusty Reuters to translate the announcement into plain English:
Time Warner shareholders of record on Nov. 27 will receive an AOL stock dividend for every 11 shares of Time Warner common stock they hold…Based on the closing price of Time Warner’s stock at $32.35 and its 1.17 billion outstanding shares, the ratio would effectively value AOL’s market capitalization at around $3.44 billion…AOL common stock will begin trading on a ‘when-issued’ basis on the New York stock Exchange on Nov. 24 and will start trading under the ‘AOL’ symbol on Dec. 10.
Of course, it’s been almost 6 month months since Time Warner announced the AOL spin off, but now we finally get a date to watch. On December 9th, former Google exec and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, will get to show us what he–and AOL–are made of!
Twitter Implementing Retweets On A Small Scale
- Posted by Andy Beal in MAKE MONEY ONLINE, WEBSITE SEO |
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Remember Twitter’s plans to make “retweeting” an official function?
Sure you do, the mock-ups looked like this:
Well, Twitter just announced the following:
We’ve just activated a feature called retweet on a very small percentage of accounts in order to see how it works in the wild. Retweet is a button that makes forwarding a particularly interesting tweet to all your followers very easy. In turn, we hope interesting, newsworthy, or even just plain funny information will spread quickly through the network making its way efficiently to the people who want or need to know.
So keep your eyes peeled, because you might be one of the lucky ones!
PS. If you’re not seeing the retweet option, Twitter has a consolation prize for you. It’s cleaning up the spam in trending topics.
NFL Player’s Tweet Is Going To Cost Him $600,000
- Posted by Andy Beal in MAKE MONEY ONLINE, WEBSITE SEO |
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You’re already careful about what you say on Twitter, right?
I mean, you read my advice on reputation management, so you know not to go around tweeting defamatory tweets in the name of "fun."
Right?
Good, then I never have to worry about you getting in as much trouble as Larry Johnson of the Kansas City Chiefs. What did he do? Er, only threw out some gay slurs on Twitter–costing him a one-game suspension and about $600,000 in lost earnings!
Agent Peter Schaffer said the game check and other lost revenue would amount to about a penalty of about $600,000 for the former two-time Pro Bowl player…Coach Todd Haley and first-year general manager Scott Pioli have repeatedly said they are trying to build a new culture and a new attitude for a struggling franchise, which has sunk to the bottom of the NFL and that disloyalty will not be tolerated.
Mashable has the offending tweets–in case you’re interested.
I’ve seen much worse thrown around on Twitter, but this should be (yet another) warning that just because there are few rules in social media, you shouldn’t be reckless with your words.
The next time you go to tweet something ugly, ask yourself if your boss would be mad if he saw your comments? Would your mom be disappointed in you? If the answer is yes, think twice about posting.
Your penalty may not be $600,000, but you could get fired–or worse, a stern talking-to from your mom!
ICANN To Become a More Independent Company
- Posted by Andy Beal in MAKE MONEY ONLINE, WEBSITE SEO |
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After 11 years, the not-for-profit group Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers–which we all know as ICANN–is becoming more independent.
ICANN has managed internet domain names since 1998, but up until now had been closely tied to the US Department of Commerce. Going forward ICANN will…
…operate as a more independent entity. Other governments and the private sector will now have a greater say in how domains will be managed. The Commerce Department will continue to hold a seat on ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee, but it’s influence will now be on par with that of other members of the organization.
Those other members are so excited that they, well, forgot how to speak in plain English. If this statement from Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, is any indication of the future of ICANN, we can likely expect continued bureaucracy–just not all US biased:
ICANN will now commit to a “multi-stakeholder, private sector led, bottom-up policy development model for DNS technical coordination.”
Yeah, what she said.
Now we just need to wait and see what comes out of ICANN, now that there are not as many political pressures. For example, the proposed .xxx TLD for adult sites, was shot down after pressure on the US government by conservative advocacy groups. Could .xxx domains now be back on the table?
Omniture and comScore Join Forces For Online Metrics
- Posted by Andy Beal in MAKE MONEY ONLINE, WEBSITE SEO |
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It seems that getting itself acquired by Adobe isn’t enough to keep the web analytics giant Omniture busy. It has announced today that it will partner with the Boy That Cried Wolf comScore to unify online audience metrics.
Joking aside, it looks like a peanut butter/chocolate moment for the world of online audience measurement. The partnership will see comScore combine the data it gets from a 2 million person global panel with Omniture’s–raise pinky to side of mouth–1 trillion quarterly web site transactions. According to the announcement:
This strategic partner relationship blends these two methodologies in a highly automated way to create a unified approach for audience measurement designed to enable publishers to represent themselves in a more comprehensive manner to advertisers, and for advertisers to better optimize their media planning with the benefit of more extensive media reach data.
That’s a fancy way of saying the data is going to be a lot more accurate from here on out. As Josh James, Omniture CEO and co-founder puts it, "With this relationship, Omniture and comScore will enable publishers who have rich, highly targeted audience segments to reliably demonstrate their value to advertisers and also help advertisers find these attractive consumer segments. The combined offering will provide advertisers and publishers with a common currency to measure the value of online audiences across an ever-increasing number of digital channels."
So what does this mean for publishers and advertisers? I like how Scott McDonald, SVP Research, Conde Nast Publications explains how it will help (in theory):
"For more than a decade, we have fretted about – and sometimes quarreled about — the discrepancies between the audience estimates derived from third-party panels like comScore’s and those derived from web site analytics systems like Omniture’s. This collaboration represents the most significant effort to date to harmonize the two approaches and give the industry, at last, a common and convergent set of numbers."
It’s a real kumbaya moment for the measurement world. Now we just need to see if the two ingredients can combine to make something as tasty as a Reese’s cup!
What do you think of this partnership?
An In Depth Look at Twitter’s New Terms of Service
- Posted by Andy Beal in MAKE MONEY ONLINE, WEBSITE SEO |
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I know it may appear I go looking for trouble, but I promise you I just like to share with you my concerns. In the case of Twitter’s update to its Terms of Service, I started thinking about what the changes could mean to us users.
I’m a huge fan of Twitter, and very much rely on the service for my micro-communications, so I hope none of these scenarios ever materialize.
1. Ownership of Tweets
While Twitter’s new Terms state that you maintain full ownership of your Tweets, it provides no guarantee that you can get access to, or download, such content.
We reserve the right at all times (but not [sic] will not have an obligation) to remove or refuse to distribute any Content on the Services and to terminate users or reclaim usernames.
Twitter further states:
Twitter reserves the right to immediately terminate your account without further notice in the event that, in its judgment, you violate these Rules or the Terms of Service.
Unlikely but Possible Scenario:
Make one mistake and, without notice or opportunity to rectify, Twitter can delete your account and all the Tweets that you supposedly own.
2. Advertising
Twitter’s new terms include the following language:
In consideration for Twitter granting you access to and use of the Services, you agree that Twitter and its third party providers and partners may place such advertising on the Services or in connection with the display of Content or information from the Services whether submitted by you or others.
Unlikely but Possible Scenario:
Twitter could start embedding links in your actual Tweets or start using inline contextual ads–those double-underlined links that open ads, not web pages–all without your permission.
3. APIs
You’re giving Twitter pretty broad usage rights to distribute your Tweets:
You agree that this license includes the right for Twitter to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Twitter for the syndication, broadcast, distribution or publication of such Content on other media and services, subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use.
Unlikely but Possible Scenario:
What if Twitter started selling your Tweets to analytics or research companies? The company is sitting on a mountain of data and if the advertising model fails, Twitter could make a healthy bottom line by selling that data.
4. Private Data
I’m not sure if this is new, but Twitter has every right to read your direct messages:
We also reserve the right to access, read, preserve, and disclose any information as we reasonably believe is necessary to (i) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request, (ii) enforce the Terms, including investigation of potential violations hereof, (iii) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, (iv) respond to user support requests, or (v) protect the rights, property or safety of Twitter, its users and the public.
Unlikely but Possible Scenario:
Twitter becomes concerned that you’re using its service to organize a protest about its new Terms. It takes a look at your Direct Messages and concludes that you are a threat to the safety of other users. It annihilates your account!
