A Twittering World


A microblogging website , that lets user post about “what they are doing” ,in just 140 characters, whose basic idea sprung up from a simple status message concept from Instant Messengers like Gtalk, Yahoo Messenger etc, Twittering has become the next generic name and an Internet buzzword , alongside Googling , Digging and Facebooking……

With the growing buzz , Twitter has also been flooded with celebrity pages , with several high profile people creating a Twitter page for them , to update their fans about their schedules, events,photos etc.
The list has included everyone from Lance Armstrong, Oprah Winfrey , Britney Spears, Mariah Carey , Coldplay , Chris Cornell , Larry King and even sports teams like LA Lakers, NFL etc

Infact it has not even spared the political world , where the likes of Barack Obama and 10 Downing Street are constantly using it to reach out to their people and listen to their queries . For a fact . Obama’s Twitter page has almost 1.05 million followers whereas 10 Downing Street has a half million viewers.

comScore reports that 9.3 million people worldwide used Twitter in March, up from 4.3 million in February, growth it partly attributes to the large amount of media coverage Twitter has received.

Revenue Model

Twitter co founder , Biz Stone says , they are trying to create value for their consumers and once the “Twitting” fad grows into a larger phenomenon , they would start on their revenue generation spree by targetting companies .
Twitting experts on the other hand feel , that traditional advertising will not work for this microblogging site , and Twitter must adopt an entirely different strategy to make money out of this site.
As Kotler says , “The aim of marketing is to make selling unnecessary”

Revenue need not come only from ads. Twitting updates from users across the world, about their activities , at a given point of time , at a given place , can lead to enormous customer insights which can be further sold to major firms including market research agencies , and at the same time , protecting the privacy of the individual users.

Keyword search can also be a key element in their revenue , with the type of information streaming out constantly from their 9 million users would lead to a very profitable customer insight database to be sold to firms.

E.g. If a media agency is able to understand that people belonging to a particular city , say New York, are more inclined to watching TV at a given hour(from their Twitter updates) , this can lead to better media planning and hence increased network ratings for that corresponding channel

Twitter also plans to develop tools that brands and companies can use to drive research and engage consumers. These brands can create premium and paid “Twitter” pages that contains exclusive information on the latest releases, news and articles about them, and also offers special discounts to their “followers”

Future of Twitter

With a simple one line concept of “What you are doing ” Twitter has certainly turned some heads and on an expansion spree. The success of it lies in its simplicity and the timeframe of the message it tries to convey (similar to Digg – Digg ur fav posts , Facebook – A place to network with friends and relatives , LinkedIn – a place to network with possible recruiters etc)
It is also touted to be the 2009 Top technology trend of the year.

Despite all the media frenzy surrounding it , the future of Twitter is still uncertain , where some users believe it will either die a eventual death after a brief stint or it will get taken over by some corporate giant like Microsoft or Google
Rumors has it , that talks are already been taking place , for a complete buyout by Google in the near future.
Will it be called Twoogle then ?

Catch me on Twitter at :http://twitter.com/hkmurali

8 thoughts on “A Twittering World

  1. i prefer twitter over facebook any day.
    it is just relevant enough for my needs.
    celebrity or not i dont care much. you wont find me following any so called celeb. i have my friends to pay heed to, no matter what the portal is.

    twoogle definitely NOT!

  2. How does it make it different from facebook, personal blogs, orkutting etc..etc…world is becoming compact and people have severe time crunch so they resort to somethning which is less time consuming. This is something new in the world of consumerism. Marketers need new platform and people need their dose of refresh entertainment and that is the gap filled by those companies running things like “twitters”

  3. @ Seher(Americanising Desi)

    i jus noticed that u seem to spend more time over facebook than twitter , and there goes the first contradiction of ur answer ” i prefer twitter over facebook any day.”

    sometimes the choice is not always ours. its jus a matter of days , when u seeem to change ur views abt this application and also the way u use it.

    @ Rashmi.
    u mite be rite .yet u must understand there are millions of social networking sites, blogs , forums , mobile blogging site etc.
    but Twitter is the only one , which has got so much media attention next to Facebook and Myspace
    and also the only site to be embraced by a huge percentage of the top celebrities and mainly attributed to the simplicity and usefulness of the product

  4. I prefer twitter over facebook. Facebook has become a mess now with all those irritating quizes and applications. CRAZY SHIT. Twitter is to the point and simple and WE ARE THE CENTER OF ATTENTION. On facebook you wait for friends to reply to your mail or comment on your pic. On twitter you are independant. You can keep writing shit and no need to wait for your friend’s reply. Infact Twitter is making me neglect my newly created blog as well! N in twitter there arnt many personal stuff like pics so no need for extra security. It is also a good way of advertising. I LOVE IT. I could have as well written this on my blog. Am working on it.

  5. I actually prefer Blogging cos I find it more intellectual 🙂 Not that Twitter is dumb but reading blogs makes u grow and provides u with alot of opportnuities to learn and develop, personally.

    Keshi.

  6. I stumbled onto your blog after about watching your comments from days on various mutual blogs….

    Yeah i heard alot about twittering..
    Seems like most of them twitter from mobile and i wonder what is so important to do so…:p

    keep writing man…:) for sure it inspires someone…

    Visit me sometime..:)

    Cheers

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