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Posts tagged Twitter
Knowledge, Search Engines and Social Media
Aug 3rd
It is often said that we live in a knowledge economy. In such a context, it is only natural that information technology receives great attention as a set of tools that can lead to economic development. Search engines, for instance have become part of our daily lives. Google, with sales slightly above $20 billion a year, is worth around $150 billion in terms of total stock shares, while Wal-Mart – the biggest company on the planet – is only worth around $190 billion with $400 billion sales. It appears that financial analysts are convinced that information is more valuable than everyday things!
Search engines are so valuable, not because they contain information, but because they speed-up the search for relevant information. This is because an important distinction must be made between knowledge and information. Knowledge is a state of mind that one reaches after performing a certain task. When someone used a hammer, for instance, that person acquires knowledge about how to use a hammer. It is this change that happens in his mind that constitutes knowledge. Now, if that person sits down and writes a procedure about using a hammer, that would be information. This information about how to use a hammer is in no way knowledge about using a hammer. In fact, someone who would read that written procedure would not necessarily know how to use a hammer unless he actually uses a hammer, and therefore acquires his own knowledge about using a hammer.
My point here is that using a search engine does not directly contribute to the economic development of a country in the context of knowledge economy. It only helps in not missing a piece of information that could be useful in guiding our actions and leading to new knowledge. Let’s say someone wants to create a Facebook application. Searching for “how to create Facebook Application” on Google will not give the knowledge necessary to build a Facebook application. It will only lead to a couple of web pages that could contain information about how to build one. The searcher will have to read and select the page that is appropriate for what he wants to build and go on building the Facebook app by following the procedures. Since these procedures never complete enough to get the job done, the searcher will have to find some things out on his own and it is this whole process of contextualizing and sense making of the information that is found from the web page that leads to knowledge about building a Facebook app. Well, ‘thats obvious’ you will say, but this obvious thing can lead to something important.
If a web page exist out there and describes a procedure on how to build a Facebook app, it is because someone out there knows how to build Facebook apps. Therefore, reading that web page is not the only way to have access to information about building Facebook apps. Talking to that guy who created the Facebook app is another option, and it could lead to better learning experience for the searcher. Now, how can the searcher talk to that guy if he doesn’t know him? Answer: Social media!
Social media is not just one way of keeping in touch with friends and have a laugh. It is also another way of looking for the right source of information. Only, the difference here is that social media is interactive because we’re not dealing with a website but a person. Therefore, there is a whole new set of things we can do using social media that we couldn’t have done with search engines.For instance, we don’t have to find the right person by searching for a couple of keywords. We can ask a friend who can ask a friend and eventually get connected to the right person with the knowledge we’re looking for. The advantage here is that if we’re ignorant on a subject to the point that we don’t even know the keywords to look for, then it is only by interacting with someone else who will know a little more that we can get to the right source of knowledge.
The big question is, will social media become bigger than search engines?
Social Media, Weak Ties and Trust Agents
Jul 22nd
There is something we can do with Facebook and Twitter and that we cannot really do so easily through traditional means of communication. And that thing is to connect with people without investing too much time in the relationship. Take the example of Twitter. A user can follow another user with very little costs besides spending a few minutes finding that user through Twitter’s search functionality. The good thing with Twitter is that information can flow from the friend to the follower for as little time investment as a mouse-click. These type of connections are weak ties: besides that Twitter connection between both parties, there is little that brings them together.
Because they don’t require so much time and effort, weak ties are not those ties we trust most. Long-time friends and family members are usually those we trust and rely on in our life. These are strong ties and are build through the years. However, weak ties have something to offer that strong ties cannot offer: diversity. Since we hang out so much with our close friends and family members, we end-up influencing each other. Our perception of the world and life becomes very dependent on how our strong ties perceive things. In one word, spending too much time with the same people is bad for out brain!
This is exactly where social media picks things up. By allowing us to connect with people without having to engage in costly relationships, we can find out about new things for very little effort. We end up with a better understanding of the world by seeing things from fresh perspectives.
An implication of this conception of social media is that trust agents are bad for our health. Trust agents are those high profile social media users such as top bloggers, gurus, celebrities, etc. Sticking too much to what these people say will have the same effect of sticking only with close friends and family members: we will be exposed to only one way of seeing things. Trust agents should be avoided and social media should be a tool for exploration.
Twitter And Promoted Trends
Jun 11th
So Twitter will imitate Google’s AdWords program and have promoted trends. What will be the result of this new feature? Well, very much like what happens to Google’s content with hordes of SEO experts using their tricks to promote advertising material, Twitter is a tool for marketing. Now, with this concept of ‘promoted trends’, the line between advertising, real content and content disguised as advertising is even more blurred. Why? cuz people will have the reflex of thinking that since there is a space reserved for advertising, that is promoted trends, then everything else is real content.
Therefore, someone having the intention of disguising advertising as content is going to have strong persuasive power since the consumers’ advertising defense mechanism will be sleeping. The messages that are not displayed as promoted content will be processed as being reliable information created by a peer social media user.
Celebrity Friendship: Turning Twitter Into A TV Show
Apr 18th
If we believe its blog post, Twitter is not meant to be a TV show. But what do we find when we look at Twitter’s suggestions? For news, we get Slate, CBS, CNN and Larry King. For funny, we get Conan O’Brian. It all looks like Twitter is an extension of traditional media. But how did this happen? Celebrity friendship! Celebrities are those that are the most followed on Twitter. It seems like everyone on Twitter is befriending a celebrity. Or is it a small group that follows no one else but celebrities? Of course, we can’t really answer this question unless we take a close look at the network structure on Twitter. Given the size of the network and the little effort it takes to follow somebody, we can bet that it’s one hell of a huge network graph. However, one thing is sure: those who have more followers will have a greater audience for what they say than those who don’t.
Let it be purely on mathematical basis,one having millions of followers is guaranteed that a large number of people will be exposed to one’s tweets. Don’t forget, Twitter is real time. If you follow a hundred people who happen to tweet at a high and constant rate, you will have to be on Twitter constantly to make sure you don’t miss a thing. Since nobody can really be on Twitter constantly, it means that there will only be a fraction of one’s followers who will see a tweet. In other words, a Tweet will get attention only for a very short period of time, unless there are a lot of people who see that tweet in that short period and that they retweet it. Thus the value of having tons of followers.
This is the problem with celebrity friendship. Everyone being friends with celebrities means that celebrities are the ones that have a voice on Twitter. Other people’s tweets will be buried under the heavy noise generated by the millions who follow and retweet celebrities’ none sense. To make my case more dramatic, a close study of retweeting rate vs number of followers shows that those with more followers are less likely to retweet one of their own friends! Isn’t that awful? Ashton Kutcher is probably the most generous celebrity when it comes to retweeting and he is way below average when it comes to retweeting others. As a result, Twitter ends up being just a broadcasting platform for those who already have one: TV. Befriending celebrities is definitely not a win-win situation.
Does Twitter Offer Anything Besides Following Celebrities?
Mar 28th
Twitter is great for celebrities. If we look at both the number of followers and retweets received, celebrities are among the top Twitter users. This is something that annoys me. Twitter is an open communication platform which means that it should give voice to everybody. However, those who flood traditional media end up having an omnipresence on other social media. As a result, social media becomes an extension of traditional media. TV viewers are first fed with stuff on Entertainment Tonight and then start commenting about that stuff on social media. It is a convergence of traditional and social media towards the same kind of useless nonsense about the silly life of celebrities.
After celebrities, other known faces take the second spot on Twitter. A-list journalists for instance happen to have a lot of followers. So once again, the propaganda machine is doing a great job of having all kinds of media converge on the same subjects. Is there a way out of this situation? I believe so, but it is going to take time.
A Forrester report shows that 70% of people on Twitter are spectators. When a spectator signs up with Twitter for the first time, he is offered to follow a list of people who are celebrities. For this person, it is only a natural to follow celebrities because his other source of information does not expose him to anything else that celebrities. This is the first obstacle to real social media: people just don’t know where to start since traditional media has kept them in the dark about a lot of real issues.
The second obstacle to real social media is time and effort spent by alternative sources of information to reach people and attract their attention. Since people are used to a certain kind of conversations that are dominant on TV, new ideas are marginalized and it is going to take time before people can find meaning in them. The danger is that Twitter and the Internet in general are cheap media but it doesn’t mean that competition is free. Traditional media can also broadcast for low costs and they have the kind of muscle to direct people to their websites. However, the possibility is there for innovative communicators to broadcast new ideas with relatively low costs. Once every a while, when someone will be tired of the same old opinions being exchanged on CNN or the Wall Street Journal, he or she might try something new and here we go. A new person joins the crowd of those who wanna do something good with social media.
The Economics of ‘Mass Tweeting’ And ‘Mass Following’
Feb 15th
I have briefly discussed the concept of mass tweeting as a tactics used for garbing attention to the mass tweeter’s account with the hope of transforming some of those who are followed into followers. I have stated that mass tweets can only lead into attracting one kind of Twitter users, that is ‘mass followers’. This is a normal phenomenon since mass following requires searching for certain keywords, which means that those who tweet a lot have more chances of being found in search queries and eventually followed by mass followers.
What I will question in the current post is the common belief that such tactics are futile. Indeed, many would argue that mass tweeting is bad strategy for marketing since it attracts the wrong kind of crowd. I would argue the opposite. I think mass followers and mass tweeters are the right kind of crowd to be in touch with, especially for those who are into social media marketing. I will try to explain why it is so.
Mass tweeting will not only attract mass followers
First, we have to understand that mass tweeting will not only attract mass followers. There will always be a small amount of ‘curious’ Twitter users that will follow a mass tweeter simply because of the fact that there are tons of people who listen to Twitter streams and that most of them are ‘followers’ who don’t tweet that much. These curious users are valuable because they have the potential to blossom into qualified leads, meaning that if they are exposed to the right message, they will be interested in the product or service that is promoted. Since the proportion of these curious users will be small compared to mass followers, it will be hard to justify the investment of all that effort in gaining only a few potential qualified leads.
Mass followers can be profitable too
However, a closer examination of mass followers will show that they are also valuable to a certain degree. Mass followers might not become qualified leads, but they know that most of their followers will not be qualified leads either because they have been acquired through either mass tweeting or mass following. Therefore, the mass follower has to adopt a more rational relationship with most of his friends and followers. He will have to enter into a ‘retweeting association’ with his followers meaning that they retweet each other in other to profit from each other’s ‘curious followers’ that they have each amassed through mass tweeting and mass following!
Now, this is going to create serious traffic to a promoted product or service only if there are enough marketers connected to each other and constantly retweeting each other. This implies that they all use some king of automatic retweeting application that saves them from having to be retweeting 24/7.
The effects of automated tools on Twitter user experience
Who says automatic application means spam. My view is that while this is close to black hat social media optimization, it is not so bad since the marketing/SMO community seems to be very small compared to the whole Twitter network of 25 million users. In other words, these automatic retweeting software will only not seriously affect Twitter’s quality of service or user experience because spam will be filtered out by the ‘curious users’ who happen to be part of the SMO clique. However, these software will insure the majority of marketers that there message will reach a critical amount of curious users, hoping that they create the proper word-of-mouth.
Your Twitter Followers Are Worth Their Retweets
Jan 25th
If you’re into Twitter for business, then you are into word-of-mouth marketing. You should look for people who retweet a lot and start retweeting them. Anything else is a waste of time in my opinion. Of course, companies use Twitter as a tool for customer support or relationship management but Twitter’s unique capability is in empowering promotion.
Retweet as indicator of social behavior
Since Twitter is a social media, it is expected from its users to be sociable. Now, what would be considered socializing on Twitter? I would answer this question by asking another question: what is the point with having followers or following others?
It becomes obvious from this question that the role of followers in Twitter is to perform word-of-mouth for the person they are following. So following someone on Twitter is one way of saying: “I like your stuff, i’ll let people know about it”. Now this ‘I’ll let people know about it’ part is achieved through a particular feature on Twitter: retweeting.
From here, it social practice for professional users to retweet each other out of necessity. If two marketers are mutual friends and that they roughly have the same number of followers, they will be better of retweeting each other since each will benefit from the followers of the other.
The importance of having lots of followers
This is why it is so important to have a lot of followers on Twitter. By having a lot of followers, you have a higher reach and more people are likely going to retweet you. As a result, for the same effort required to write a tweet, you will have better return.
However, there is another indicator of value for your followers: they should be retweeting a lot. If you have the choice between 1000 followers who retweet 1% of your tweets in average, or 100 followers who retweet 15% of your tweets, which one are you to choose? I bet you’ll take the 100 followers who retweet more frequently.
The Art of Making Money Out of Nonsense
Jan 7th
If you ever doubted Twitter’s capacity to make money out of tons of nonsense produced by regular people, it’s time to change your mind. Believe it or not, there are people out there who are willing to pay for tweets. And they are willing to pay 25 M$ for it!
Search engines are the first movers
While it might seem crazy at first thought, Twitter is a powerful tool in the hands of marketers. Besides interacting with customers, listening to conversations on Twitter can be an interesting way to get useful information about competition. Since everything is open, every move by our competition is visible to us. Of course, each of our moves are visible to our competition also. What matters then is who is going to best analyse the data.
Since making sense out of text is very similar to search engines’ traditional capabilities, Google and Microsoft people where fast to have exclusive access to what people talk about on the micro-blogging platform. It is somehow a duty for the search engine to come up with a good understanding of tweets in order to be the big service providers when it comes to getting knowledge out of tweets.
More to come
But this initial move from search engines is just the tip of the iceberg. The kind of analysis that can be done one tweets is infinite. Each new way of making sense out of data is going to give a competitive edge to the analyst. With semantic web gradually taking form, a whole set of applications will analyze Twitter content and make sense out of it. As a result, expect Twitter to make even more money out of nonsense.
The Unofficial Function of Social Media
Dec 6th
Every website is there for an official reason. For example, people use Facebook to keep in touch with friends. Linkedin is there so professionals keep in touch with colleagues. Twitter is there so you can send short messages about what is happening around you. However, websites also have an unofficial reason to exist and my opinion is that this unofficial reason is the real thing that makes the website work. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular social networking websites so I can talk more about my view.
Facebook: voyeurism (and exhibitionism)
The real reason why Facebook works is that people can become voyeurs in a legit way. Most of the time, people spend their time on Facebook by clicking around their friends’ friends profiles. People look at pictures, bios and so on. Of course, people chat and comment on each others pictures and videos, but what is really happening on Facebook is that you can get into someone’s life without braking any privacy law. Basically, this means that every Facebook user implicitly agrees to be the subject of voyeurism. It’s like their is a deal among Facebook users that they can all invade each other’s privacy.
Twitter: spamming (a.k.a marketing)
When someone tweets something, it’s supposed to be about what’s happening because that’s what is written on top of the text box where people write their tweets. But when I read 90% of tweets, I get the impression that product sales, promotions and money making schemes are all that is happening around the world. Well, that’s because doing marketing is Twitter’s unofficial function. More precisely, Twitter is a very effective tool for viral marketing because of it’s retweet feature. Every time something is tweeted, a whole bunch of people will see it for a short period. Every time something is retweeted, more people will see it. So the idea with Twitter is that 1) you need to have a lot of followers and 2) you need to have a retweet ring so you can actually not waste your time using Twitter.
Linkedin: spying on competition(a.k.a. benchmarking )
No, Linkedin won’t get you a job especially if you have a lot of connections. Why? because those people you are connected to don’t know you. Why do they add you to their network if they don’t know you and that you will probably never be useful to each other? That’s because they wanna get the biggest possible network to see what is happening on the market. This make spying the unofficial function of Linkedin. Just like Facebook where everybody agrees to be an exhibitionist, Linkedin users agree to give away information about their company. Incidentally, it becomes very useful for professionals who want to find a good fit for their talent.
Digg: brainwashing
Ok, a nicer way would be that it’s a bookmark sharing social network. But in reality, it’s a place to brainwash people because popular links produce group effects and simply get more attention than links that are at the bottom. If a lot of people digg a page, it must be because it’s cool, right? Well, not really. Taking a closer look at the top links on Digg, you’ll see that they are all submitted by a small click of around 500 diggers. Basically, if you are not one of those guys, your links will never make it to the first page. This means that it isn’t cool pages that are on Digg’s top page, but the pages that are submitted by those guys. As a result, everybody is under the influence of those top digger’s taste which makes brainwashing the unofficial function of Digg.
Mashable: advertising for startups
Yeah I know. Mashable is supposed to be about social media news. But which news? It makes me laugh every time I read one of those posts with a list of ten useful/hot social networks. In those ten websites, there is always one of them that is not hot nor useful. I wonder what one it is doing in that list among 9 other cool sites? Somebody being paid to put it the list? I guess so. This is exactly why the FTC is going to fine bloggers who don’t disclose payments. This makes Mashable very similar to Digg, only they don’t give anyone the illusion of interaction: “you are being fed by what we talk about” says Pete Cashmore.
An Inquiry Into The Mind of a Follower's Follower
Nov 10th
One of the things that have amazed me in Twitter is the concept of mass following. The point with mass following is that some of those people that you follow will end up following you back, so you are building a follower-base. I wondered what happens in the mind of someone who follows someone that followed him and I have come up with a few profiles.
The Newbie
Some will follow people who follow them because they are told that it’s a Twitter etiquette. If this is true, then celebrities who happen to be those with most followers are the most unethical of Twitter users. Newbies think that it is a right thing to do so they follow people. Sometimes, they go as far as reading stuff and clicking on a few links. Sometimes, they even get influenced by promotional content because they don’t know it is promotional content. These are some of the most important people on Twitter. They are the ones who are will have the most effective viral effect because they don’t understand how the whole Twitter thing works.
The Selfish Fool
These are people who think that they are so cool, smart, fun and that it is only natural that they get followed. They follow back because of the Twitter etiquette again. These are usually selfish people who do not tend to interact with other and have more monologues that dialogues. Don’t put them in any of your Twitter lists.
The Spammer (a.k.a. the Marketer)
This is someone who is actually looking to be followed by mass followers. His trick is to mass spam and wait for people to follow him. Some of them are really clever and keep a good following/follower ratio so it doesn’t show up when they themselves perform mass following. In doing so, they get somehow genuine followers. These guys are usually very interactive and will get involved in conversations, which makes them actually be great Twitter friends!
The Ones I Forgot
Let me know if there are profiles I forgot. Note: if you follow those who follow you because they offer good tweets, then you are none of the above. I personally follow people who as a rule of etiquette when someone has something good to say.