Yesterday, April 17, 2009 will mark the day twitter went mainstream. Oprah dedicated an entire segment of her show to twitter. As part of the show she proclaimed Ashton Kutcher the king of twitter for beating CNN for the right to be the first member of twitter with 1,000,000 followers.
Folks, the levy has broken and twitter is no longer a cool, niche, and quaint community of bleeding edge participants. Get ready to see your mom following you on twitter. Scary. I know.
In full disclosure, I’m not a fan of Oprah. However, her segment on twitter was brilliant. These two videos do a great job of helping anyone and everyone understand the birth of twitter, why it exists, and how to use it.
The key quotes from the videos are twitter “democratizes media” and “in some ways this is kind of a commentary on the state of media – because I believe that we’re at a place now with social media where one person’s voice can be as powerful as an entire news network, an entire media network.” Pretty powerful. I expect those quotes to be over used in presentations from agencies and marketers to their clients.
So What Does This Mean
We’re going to see a shift from push to pull. No longer is it going to be the agencies and bleeding edge trying to get clients and brand managers to embrace twitter. They’re going to start asking about it. So you better be on twitter. If you aren’t; you’re not going to have any credibility.
The noise to signal ratio is going to skyrocket. The number of new people joining twitter will be enormous. As these new people try to “figure out” twitter, existing long time users will see the quality of tweets decrease.
We’re going to need metrics…real metrics. As I’ve stated hundreds of times before if you just evaluate a tweeter based on the number of followers, Britney Spears with a whopping 119 updates would be #3. Those 119 updates have come over the last 7 months. That amounts to roughly 4 tweets a week. Qualitatively, the tweets are useless making the numbers even more polarizing.
Now, more than ever, we need a method for evaluating the quality of a tweeter. I’ve long pushed for some type of thumbs up/thumbs down approach that’s similar to Pandora. If millions of new people to twitter simply follow the people with the most followers (it makes sense to take that approach) they’re going to be disappointed with twitter and never see the full value. We all lose if that happens.
Long time twitter veterans and power users (aka us geeks) will start flocking to other sites like Tumblr and FriendFeed. Why? Because you lose the cool factor when you’re at the same bar as everyone else. This is a critical point because it’s not about twitter or Facebook or Tumblr. It’s about ALL of these things. You don’t need a twitter strategy or a Facebook campaign – you NEED a social media strategy.
The next few months are going to be interesting. One thing is certain – if you are in the PR, marketing, interactive, web, or technology space you need to be on twitter, if only to understand what the hell everyone is talking about. I suggest you join now, it takes less than 2 minutes.
In many states talking with your cel-phone (non hands free) and texting while driving is illegal. Personally, I have no problem with this, but I think it should be extended to eating while driving. Eating while driving is much more dangerous than talking on the phone while driving.
Ok, that said, the thing that has annoyed me for years are the people who drive while letting their dogs site on their lap. Talk about dangerous, that’s really dangerous. Plus, when you let people like Jessica Simpson (who can’t walk and talk at the same time) drive while a dog is on her lap you could end up with some serious carnage.
Jessica Simpson
I was really surprised to see The Governator veto a bill in California that would have made driving with pets on your lap illegal. He already passed laws that prohibit texting and talking on the phone while driving. WTF?
Today, they introduced a new home page. The new home page utilizes a new image on the left hand side of the page that shows how Facebook enables you to connect with people across the world. It’s a simple visual, but gets the point across quickly. I like it. On the right hand side of the page are the registration fields for new users. In essence, they’ve split the meat of the page into two sections, but both of those sections work together. The left hand image simply shows what Facebook does and the left hand form fields are there for people to take action. Lastly, header now contains a set of login form fields with a checkbox to keep you logged in.
This is amazingly timely. According to a new study, there is a link between the number of “friends” you have on Facebook and how narcissistic you are. Specifically, the study states, “the researchers found that the number of Facebook friends and wallposts that individuals have on their profile pages correlates with narcissism. Narcissists are also more likely to choose glamorous, self-promoting pictures for their main profile photos, she said, while others are more likely to use snapshots.”
So why is this timely, you might ask? Well, just yesterday I wrote about the need to focus on quality instead of quantity when it comes to things like Facebook. I’m totally on to something
First a shout-out to Brandie for finding this great write up from Sapient about what marketers want out of their agencies in the future. Brandie always offers up raw, honest, and opinionated feedback. Her commentary on the article is fantastic and worth a read, especially if you are on the agency side.
According to the article, Sapient, “…recently sponsored a national online digital marketing and interactive advertising survey to gain insight into what marketers want from their advertising and marketing agencies in the next 12 months. The survey polled more than 200 chief marketing officers (CMOs) and senior marketing professionals, all of whom are either directly or indirectly responsible for managing digital marketing budget allocation across multiple channels.”
Personally, I would have preferred it if they spoke with junior marketers as well. Remember it’s the junior marketers that are on the cutting edge of technology. That said, the write up is very telling of how agencies can position themselves for future success.
There were 4 items on the list that really stuck out to me:
Greater knowledge of the digital space – This isn’t a surprise, but it’s 100% fundamental. If you aren’t on top of the digital space you’re losing the battle before even going to war. Get the right people in place to make sure your overall digital knowledge pool is deep and wide. Understand the basics, but also know what’s on the horizon.
Agency executives using the technology they are recommending – AMEN. Don’t tell a client to be on Facebook if you aren’t on Facebook. I don’t care if you think twitter is stupid (which I did for a while), you need to be on it. You need to understand it and why it could work for something. It’s all about credibility. How can you recommend X when you aren’t even doing X. For example, every agency should have a blog or participate in one. How can you be a PR agency talking about blogger relations when you don’t have a blog that’s engaging your clients? These are all questions clients will ask or are thinking.
Chief Digital Officers make agencies more appealing – This really surprised me. I continue to hear the need for integration. When you integrate “traditional” and “digital” departments, philosophies, etc. one of things that becomes less important is the seemingly figurehead role of Chief Digital Officer? Chiefs sit on top of divisions. Divisions by nature are segmented and separate from other divisions. Thus, having a Chief Digital Officer works against integration, doesn’t it? Seriously, this is a real question. Does it? I can understand the need to have a face for digital at the agency. But, I’d argue having 10 people who are really savvy and no CDO is better than 1 CDO and 2 people who are savvy. That’s just the economics of the situation.
Ability to measure success – Another non-shocker, but again this is fundamental. Everyone wants to measure everything. The web is the most measurable thing in the world. I get it. But, let me temper that by saying, while you can measure everything you should only focus on and report on the things that are actionable. I can measure the number of people coming to my site from Brazil. If I’m not going to do anything with that data, the metric is a waste of effort. Please, agencies and client, agree on what you’ll measure, how you’ll measure it, how often you’ll report, and what you’ll do to course correct.
This was a lot of fun. Thanks again to Brandie for finding the Sapient article and sharing it on her blog. As always, let’s hear what you have to say.
I’ve been a big fan of Microsoft’s Surface technology platform for a while now. Unfortunately, there have been very few real world examples to point to. I came across this demonstration earlier today.
BMW will be using it in their dealerships as a way to feature cars for customers. This is a great example of how companies can start thinking about uses for Surface. The iPhone and Apple have done a great job of conditioning consumers to use, understand, and want touch screen driven devices. With so many people using touch-screen driven tools there really isn’t a learning curve anymore, which opens up the possibilities. So, what would you do with Microsoft Surface?
Product placement is an interesting business. When Michael Phelps wears a Speedo swimsuit it means something. When Kobe is featured in a pair of Nike shoes, ditto. The list goes on an on. The one product placement that has me perplexed is the Chinese Olympic Anti-Terror Force’s use of the Segway. Yes, that Segway. Don’t believe me? Check out this photo.
Segway
Am I now supposed to want a Segway because people who shoot other people for a living use them? I’m just seriously conflicted on this example of product placement, because I have no idea why it makes sense. Thoughts?
Just read some exciting news about Google Android. Apparently it’s in beta, the SDK has been releases, and people are starting to monkey around with it. I’ve been praying for an iPhone killer and Google has the muscle to pull it off. The initial screenshots of the Android operating system look fantastic.
Interactive marketer, innovator, boat rocker, continuous learner, movie lover, risk taker, dad and all around good guy. I'm always up for a spirited conversation. These are my thoughts and ramblings, not those of my employer. Learn More »
Interactive marketer, innovator, boat rocker, continuous learner, movie lover, risk taker, dad and all around good guy. I'm always up for a spirited conversation. These are my thoughts and ramblings, not those of my employer.
