#Twitter Monetization fail?

I have been meaning to post about my thoughts on twitters announcements on trying to monetize itself. I have also meant to get some fucking sleep (yay 2 A.M. wireframes!).

The first announcement is that Twitter will licensee it's name and run ads for twitter aggregators and apps such as execu tweets and tweet deck. This just seems like the law of diminishing returns. If the only thing a brand has to sell is itself then I just feel like it has announced that it has accepted defeat. Pretty much an epic meh nice try guys.

Also, ad placements on a destination site, that almost no one goes to? Most people prefer to hit it up on their tweetdecks and twitterberries anyways. Their dedication to open API basically just shot them in their own foot. At some point if they want to do display ads, twitter is going to have to face the music and roll them into our streams without our consent, it's just the way it's got to be. I don't even think this would be such a bad thing, if they were very limited, like 1 an hour.

The second announcement is that they are going to create "pro" accounts. These accounts will receive better analytics tools. A couple problems here is that Twitter is so open and so limited that I don't see how they can corner the market on this. Just look at all the pre exisitng twitter apps out there. The fact is there dedication to an open extensible API has shot them in the foot again! Why would I pay for what I can get for free? and how can they continue to give us all the openy goodness services they always have without blocking these apps?

The final issue is that I am still not convinced that Twitter is a good sampling system. Let's see who uses twitter, tech forward people with a strong interest in social marketing and microblogging. Who is on Facebook MY FUCKING MOM JESUS CHRIST WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN? I HAVE TO HELP HER ATTACH FILES TO E-MAILS! Again, I hate to sound like a Twitter hater while I ask for seconds on that blueberry Facebook Kool-Aid but seriously it just has so much rich rich rich data.

Twitter Account

Name (sometimes faked Social Marketer, The Angry is not my christian name)
SHORT bio
Website

Facebook

Name (usually real)
Gender
Location
Age
Networks
Religion (admittedly usually something they think is clever)
Politics (also, pretty useless piece)
Single/Married
maybe even Phone Number and Address

Clearly segmenting is a tad easier on Facebook, and more useful. Another thing Facebook has never done is ALLOWED ANYONE AND EVERYONE to scrape that data. The sole gatekeeper is Facebook. I know they wield those keys responsibly but OH HOLY SHIT FACEBOOK KNOWS WAY TO MUCH ABOUT ME!

Seriously, they know every birthday party I have attended, they know which friends I wall post with, how often I post fuzzy animals acting like humans, they know all my past employers, they know where I live, they know what movies I watch on Netflix, they know EVERYFUCKINGTHING ABOUT ME!

Anyways, yeah so that's my take on the prospects of Twitter working to monetize itself. Analytics would be great if had a wider sample set, and if there was reason not to use a free service.

C.E.O.'s are big boys and blogs exist no matter what.

So I was talking to some people last night. One of them was telling me that their CEO hates blogs.and wants nothing to do with them. I can't even comprehend what that means anymore. Is that microbloggers? Is that social media users? Being afraid of blogs is like being afraid of print media its so broad and so varied it just feels unnatural.

If you are afraid of bloggers you are afraid of yourself. Many of us are social miscreants and internet trolls that like to hate on everything (like me!) But we will fucking write about you whether you like it or not!

My personal feelings are if you are afraid of us hating on your product you need a new fucking product. We are pretty much ordinary consumers who used to walk around muttering this shit to ourselves when along came the internet and dropped this goddamn megaphone in our laps. Oh hell yeah it sucks to be you.

The other experience I have had is the luddite ceo who is blocked from the internet by his people. They see one or two bad things on the internet and they get afraid that if he reads one of us trolls he is going to pull the whole goddamn interner budget. I just don't understand. If you run a major company, somewhere along the way you learned how to deal with criticism. Also you must be smart enough to know the difference between worthwhile criticism and the sophmoric bullshit most of us spew out.

So yeah blogs happened! and microblogging happened and forum trolling happened. You can be afraid of us or you can join in on it. Its up to you, but we are going to blog away anyways.

Stop bitching and learn to live with the new Facebook

So, my non social marketing friends are up in arms about the redesign of the facebook. I have seen mixed reviews out there, from the social media scene from the "briliant" to the "awful horrendous stupid." My favorite, is the ones that accuse Facebook of ripping off twitter. Who came up with Micro Blogging first is irrelevant to this article. The thing I find funny is for the last year or so whenever my normal friends get's on twitter they say "it's just fucking status updates?"

The fact of the matter, is that micro blogging happened. It's a hell of a lot easier the actual blogging. I know this because I have to come up with whole articles for this goddamn blog all the time. Twitter, popularized it, but the vast majority of people know microblogging as status updates. In fact Twitter launched in 2006 the same time as the original Facebook Newsfeed. Neither copied each other they just presented the same information in different ways.

Facebook has outgrown the Newsfeed, too much fucking information was coming between photos applications wall posts etc. (How the fuck does lil' green patch requests save the rainforest). The real time status feeed already was on facebook, but hidden. They just brought it front and center and moved the "highlights" reel from the list view on the homepage to the right. The redesign has no new functionality it was always there. Just instead of tabs it was redesigned to incorporate the live feed on the homepage.

So, to wrap up Facebook didn't steal anything from twitter. It just redesigned it's layout. It's a non story the sheeple are up in arms and bitching but nothing has changed but look of the homepage. The fact of the matter is it's good, Facebook is growing exponentially adding features and more importantly growing in the way people use it. People used to update their status once per day, now several. And they comment and like, and post links and engage in apps. The old news feed was broken, people just didn't realize it.

Checking in on Skittles

So I checked out the "Skittles Status Updates"

Wow, I could bitch but they are getting a ton of comments.

Skittles is coming down with a case of march madness.
7:33am · Comment · Like
3,616 people like this.
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Skittles is going to be the guest of honor at Dren's pool party.
Yesterday at 9:13am · Comment · Like
3,650 people like this.
View 1,089 comments


Skittles is green with envy.
Tue 9:25am · Comment · Like
9,040 people like this.
View 1,028 comments


Skittles was once rescued by a Narwhal after falling into the deep end.
Mon 2:59pm · Comment · Like
3,154 people like this.
View 314 comments


Skittles calls shotgun on the space shuttle.
Mon 7:39am · Comment · Like
772 people like this.
View 120 comments


Skittles shouldn't chew and update at the same time.
March 12 at 8:44am · Comment · Like
128 people like this.
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Skittles is jetpacking to the islands for lunch.
March 11 at 12:08pm · Comment · Like
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ReportAnne Huynh at 8:01pm March 12
Hey. I can be mean to skittles if i want too so back off =P

ReportEmily Koiner at 12:41pm March 15
well geez, ur the one who joined soo, its kinda ur fault


Skittles is half country, half hip-hop and half rock & roll.
March 11 at 5:47am · Comment · Like
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ReportRachel Morton at 8:23pm March 11
Four halves? Electrotechnisoulspunk, country, country, hiphop, and what is the other one?

ReportRachel Morton at 8:26pm March 11
Well they help
Me focus, so that means their perfect! And If it's four half then it's 400 percent perfect times infinity! You rock!


Skittles isn't sure what that was, but it definitely didn't taste like rainbow.

What exactly are the points of these posts? I have no idea. they do have that crypto-twitter feel. A sense of WTF is going on over there. And they are getting a whole lot of comments, so I guess I can't argue. I do wonder why there is no @skittles, ok so I just found out it apparently belongs to someones fucking Cat. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA I love it, I want to DM @skittles and ask if they have been getting a bunch of friend requests.

If the goal of the skittles page is to get brand awareness and just stay in peoples minds this must be working. 1,000 comments on the post "Skittles is the guest of honor at Dren's pool party" is good. However I have to wonder how long they can keep this up. The benefit to having my friends do cryptowitters is that my mind is realing with what's really going on.

When my friend posts "fuck the zombie apocolypse just grabbed me by the balls" I think holy shit what has that asshole gotten himself into? It's usually something banal like they are playing left4dead but hopefully one day zombies will really eat that guy, he is a fucknut.

anyways I digress, if they are getting 1,000 comments on these posts then good for them. @skittles the cat doesn't even have 5 followers. But again how do we measure the ROI on this social media campaign? when they get 1,000 comments for "Skittles calls shotgun on the spacestation" does sales go up?

I attended the Mad Men Twitter Panel at SXSW and there twitters were the same cryptowitters but they were attached to charachters we knew and understood beautifully realized charachters from the TV show which gives so much weight to Betty Draper twittering "tying my apron strings".

What is the Skittles charachter? what is that voice? how long can it just be this bizzare weirdness? Also, since to me this feels like a pretty generic feed, what will happen as more brands jump on the bandwagon?  What is it about this feed that will separate it from all the others?

Twitter finally updated it's site!

Now instead of paginated endless clicking of "older" it has an ajaxy kind of click more! it's like 0.005% closer to being facebook. Congratufuckinglations!

fuck twitter

Spent a good amount of time going from sxsw party to sxsw party last night while tracking people on twitter. There is definitely a benefit to knowing if the next party fucking blows. However it heightens the "there is a better party somewhere else" sensation. You used to head from party to party and a friend would actually fucking call you say "yo this shit is awesome" and you would show up there. Now everyone is voyeuristically Spying on the web where people are.

I don't mean to hate on every interaction in this brave new world, but don't you miss being surprised everyonce in a while? Or better yet just enjoying where you are?

#SXSW good notes from carnivale cruises...

Listening to the razorfish panel on social media. They just talked about the ship blogging sucked, but the capitains talking had a great post. You need a voice for blogging and engaged. I hope #skittles is listening.

They are now talking about engaing with assholes in social media. Wish more companies would have the balls to accept some people will hate you online.

Update:

Re read this post and realized for your sakes I should never fucking liveblog again!

Lol

Love this

http://twitter.com/themime

Most informative and entertaining Twitter ever.

Jeez the celebrity impersonator/joke twitter account feels almost more relevant then the real twitterers sometime. They have a stated purpose and for the most part they live up to it. @f_nietzsche @jesuschrist and @cwalken are some I have enjoyed.

Skittles the Social Media Page

WTF IS THIS SHIT?

seriously, the webpage is now a widget that hovers over all the other social media pages.

I love the fact that the first thing I get is a big disclaimer that says "skittles is not responsible for any of this all these pages are other stuff". What does that mean? Skittles isn't responsible for what it posts on twitter? Skittles isn't responsible for what's on it's YouTube channel? Skittles isn't responsible for it's flickr stream? It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth to be immediately greeted by we take no responsibility for how our brand is portrayed online by us!

I sorta love the concept but I have to say I am sorta scratching my head. What is the use of the official flickr photostream? why would I tweet about skittles? Social media is about fucking being social. Talking with your clients looking for what's being said out there. For me what's great about social media is when a company finds something you were saying out there and joins the conversation.

The Chatter/Homepage isn't an @skittles it's a #skittles. A company that is building a voice and engaging people has to have an account so that it can be a person talking to people. Although I can't for the life of me think of what @reply I want from skittles.

@theasm: Wow, there seem to be an inordinate amount yellow skittles in this bag.

@skittles: @theasm sorry about that our PA plant had too much yellow dye #5

Whoever did this understands that destination sites for something like skittles are a tad meaningless. But I don't see from this site what it is that they are doing to start the conversation. The Youtube, Flickr, and Facebook sites are all just mini destinations. The point of Social media is me and my friends are all bitching about how much tropical skittles don't taste like tropical fruit, and @skittles chimes in from out of nowhere like a creepy eavesdropper at a party. Social marketing barges into your lives and interrupts it. This site doesn't do anything to push that. It just provides destinations that you could have gone to on your own. 

To me the widget thing just seems fucking lazy. Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and Facebook all have open API's so you could make a nice cool page that is a good customer experience and fully leverages all of these social media platforms. There is no reason to be so "in your face" about the web 2.0eeness of this campaign. Nowhere do I really see a voice or aesthetic aside from some snarky photo captions the whole thing is actually pretty sterile.

Is anyone outside of Social Marketers who can't code excited about this? Is someone in Peoria going to fucking hit the roof "ZOMFGBBQ skittles has a facebook fan page! instead of homepage! now I don't have to goto skittles.com to get my awesome skittles news"

Time will tell if they actually use these services to start a conversation. Until then this site isn't social media it's just a neat tech demo. The one thing skittles.com does is allows it's marketers to focus on creating social media instead of a website. However the last video they posted to their Facebook page was 3 months ago, which is a fucking eon on the social webz. Not really relevant engaging content.