Major social networking companies such as Facebook and Twitter have long struggled to develop significant revenue models. Still, Facebook managed to enter the green earlier this year and Twitter announced today that they will be launching paid business accounts in 2010. But, want I want to focus on is how Twitter users can and are turning this micro social network into a pretty nice business.
Brad Stone’s article in the new York Times this weekend examined how individuals are now sending out paid tweets – a new form of advertising. Users with high numbers of quality followers and significant influence are being paid – often quite well – to write 140 characters about a particular product or service and press enter. John Chow, a blogger and Internet entrepreneur in Vancouver says that he makes $3,000 in the month of October alone just from paid tweeting.
The downside here is that Chow’s followers could start to feel like they are being mislead – or spammed. Since following and unfollowing someone is just one click away, making followers feel like customers could alienate a few.
Another revenue model appeared in Mashable this morning, where MSNBC has purchased the Twitter handle @BreakingNews (you may remember that CNN also purchased a Twitter handle a while back, @cnnbrk). The ability for users or organizations to build up a Twitter handle with of high-quality followers and sell it to an organization is fairly new, and pretty smart (I always think, why didn’t I do that!). It really isn’t misleading, and allows individuals to do the tough part of building a successful Twitter account, and selling this mass audience to a larger organization. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this occurred with more specific audiences in the future, similar to how blogs started out at the macro level and then shifted to focus on more specific topics.
These are just two examples of how individuals are able to turn Twitter into their own little revenue stream. However, since they they can be seen as misleading, it is vital that people are upfront and honest about paid tweeting and other disclaimers.
If the Associated Press Stylebook is “the bible of the newspaper industry” (as it declares on the front cover), then Twitter’s @FakeAPStyleBook is the bible of comic relief for writers who count on the reference book for definitive answers on grammar and style questions. It is also RaceTalk’s pick this week for #FollowFriday.
With over 60,000 followers @FakeAPStyleBook tweets multiple times a day with satirical writing tips composed in the same style as the original AP Stylebook. For example:
@FakeAPStylebook: “Xerox” is a trademarked name. Use “butt duplicator.” @FakeAPStylebook: When referring to someone with a Ph.D. as “doctor” immediately follow it with “but, you know, not a REAL doctor.” @FakeAPStylebook: Use “grandfather” instead of “granddad” because you know better, son. Really. @FakeAPStylebook: “Et al” is Latin for “those who know Al.” You can shorten long lists of names by leaving out friends of Al. @FakeAPStylebook: Stories on the success of new media printed in traditional newspapers are no longer allowed out of respect for the dying.
As noted in a piece by John C. Abell for Wired, @FakeAPStylebook often tweets tips related to current events and trends. Abell writes, “The guide is very current, too. For example, be sure that you “Refer to him as ‘President Obama’ when he first appears in an article, ‘Soul Brother Number 1‘ in subsequent mentions.”
@FakeAPStylebook has found an adoring audience on Twitter and recently, a book deal. Lydia Dishman of Fast Company reported on Monday that agent Kate McKean of the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency, Inc. has approached the Twitter handle creators, Mark Hale and Ken Lowery, about bringing their humor to book shelves.
Who knew a book deal was only 140 characters away?
Following its recent sale to Bloomberg, BusinessWeek reporters have probably felt like they’re living through the movie Office Space. According to The Wall Street Journal, “Over the last few weeks, Bloomberg has been asking BusinessWeek editorial staff members to submit resumes, news clips and 250-word statements about their personal qualifications to their new bosses.”
After all of that effort, approximately 100 employees will not be joining the publication as it transitions to Bloomberg. Steve Baker describes the scene at BusinessWeek in his personal blog: “Today is a wrenching day to be in our offices. People troop upstairs and come back carrying different kinds of envelopes.”
Below is a list of talented reporters, writers and editors that will not be working with BusinessWeek as of the end of November (cuts began occurring this morning).
Update (4:50pm): Stephanie Clifford of the Times has linked back to us (thanks for the shout out) and quoted an anonymous insider from BW who thinks the magazine is cutting the bigger voices of the magazine for a reason:
“Every indication we have from Bloomberg people is their model is The Economist, which has a singular voice, not multiple voices.”
Update (11/24, 4:15pm): John A. Byrne, Editor-in-Chief of BusinessWeek.com will not be staying with BusinessWeek as it transitions to Bloomberg. Instead, he will be launching his own digital media company in San Francisco.
At 37, Josh Tyrangiel has quickly worked his way up the journalistic ranks. Today, he becomes the first editor of the Bloomberg-run BusinessWeek. Most recently serving as editor of TIME.com and deputy managing editor of TIME , he was thought to be by many as the heir apparent to Richard Stengel.
The move shouldn’t come as a total shocker given that Norman Pearlstine, Bloomberg’ chief content officer, formerly looked over Tyrangiel’s work as editor-in-chief of Time Inc. We’ve also heard that Jim Kelly, TIME’s former managing editor has been sitting in on the Bloomberg editorial meetings with other former TIME Inc. staff.
Given Tyrangiel’s success with TIME.com, he recently worked with Peter Ha in launching Techland and also boosted the Web site’s traffic to what some expect will be 1.8 billion page views this year, the move is also a show of support for John Byrne who has been driving BusinessWeek.com’s growth and was retained by Bloomberg. Tyrangiel made TIME.com a top consumer, multimedia portal: tying text, audio, pictures and video together with an integrated approach. One of BusinessWeek.com’s top revenue drivers in the past has been ad-supported slides shows – which will likely increase 10-fold (while becoming more interactive) under Tyrangiel’s watch. And judging by the video embedded above, he articulated this approach to his managers and “troops” in a way that resonated.
In addition, if Bloomberg’s goal is to reach a broader consumer audience, beyond Wall Street, with the magazine – Tyrangiel’s non-business background will come into play. He’s a music-critic at heart (not an economist or someone with a Wall Street background), who sat down with music luminaries such as Bono and Kanye West for cover stories, during his time at Rolling Stone.
One of Tyrangiel’s first challenges will be assessing if he can save Business Exchange, BusinessWeek’s information-sharing, social network. According to previous reports, the company has sunk $16 million into the site over the last two years, while drawing only 1.5 million page views on average per month and bringing in $600,000 in revenue last year.
The above video has made its way around the PR blogosphere and Twittersphere, with people weighing in on both sides of the debate. First off, I’m a big fan of Jack O’Dwyer. He’s been doing this for 40 years and gets the industry. But as Bill Belichick, painfully proved on an even greater platform last night, even the best can be wrong with their decision making.
Jack makes the argument that PR people should only be dealing with other professionals (i.e. journalists) and not directly with consumers through social media. However, he seems to base this (from what I can get from the video) more on it being unfair for consumers, versus simply knocking its effectiveness. He makes the analogy to a pro-boxer challenging a citizen to a bar room fight to illustrate that. Maybe he wants to take the new FTC guidelines to another level???
If that truly is his argument then he’s really undervaluing the collective knowledge-base of consumers taking part in brand discussions on the Web. He’s also outdated in thinking that PR practitioners are trying to spin consumers through these new channels as they have in the past with journalists. Its a different channel, a different audience and a different voice altogether.
First of all, the majority of bloggers (and I’ll surmise avid Twitter users) are more affluent and and educated than the general population. 75% of bloggers have college degrees and 40% have graduate degrees. But more importantly, which Jack really misses, is they are taking part in a two-way conversation that they want to be a part of.
Razorfish’s recent study noted that 70% of connected consumers have read blogs produced by brands, 40% have friended a brand on Facebook or MySpace and 26% follow brands on Twitter. Consumers want this engagement, the voice, the inside scoop and ultimately the deals. There really isn’t a decision to be made. Your brand is part of social media and you can either try to influence that in a good way or let the discussion go on without out you.
The only argument left is who should own social media. To that argument I revert back to who currently produces content and has experience with reaching different audiences with different messages. Yes, that would be PR folks.
Yesterday Twitter launched a new feature allowing users to retweet posts on Twitter.com. However, this functionality – which was previously unavailable – is set up a little differently then people may be used to:
Instead of clicking a retweet symbol over someone’s picture, there is an option on the lower right-hand side of the person’s post to retweet.
You don’t have the option to add/change content in your retweet.
There is an option on the right side of the screen to (next to replies, DMs) to view only retweets from the people you follow.
You will also see posts in your feed from people that you don’t follow. This isn’t a mistake, but Twitter recommending certain posts/users to you, that have been retweeted by people you follow (see image below). This could be a great way to expand your network and discover some new people that would be great to follow, and simply positions the retweet in a different light then we’re used to (from the originally author instead of the person retweeting the post).
You also have the option of turning off retweet updates from specific users on their home page. This can be done by clicking the button next to follow/unfollow.
Overall, Twitter gets a positive grade for their new retweet functionality. However, Twitter’s one mistake is now allowing users to add content in the posts that they retweet.
Performics study of 3,000 consumers, which was released at ad:tech New York last week, looked at how various segments of consumers use social networks in their daily lives, specifically in regard to finding out about different types of products and in relation to other media channels. Two specifically interesting points from their study, were:
30 % of respondents have learned about a new product, service or brand from a social networking site
28 % of respondents said messages about sales or special deal notifications resonate with them
Meanwhile, Razorfish’s report, which was based on a survey of 1,000 “connected consumers,” echoed the sentiment of consumers engaging with brands online, taking action (recommending / posting feedback) and ultimately purchasing – especially when deals are on the table.
Nearly 70 % of respondents have read blogs produced by products or brands (e.g., Nintendo) in some frequency
26 % have followed a brand on Twitter
40 % have “friended” a brand on Facebook or MySpace
73% of respondents post product or brand reviews on Web sites (e.g., Amazon, Yelp, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
53% have blogged about a product, brand or service
70% have participated in a brand sponsored contest or sweepstakes online
With that data it’s obvious that engagement is continuing to increase, but why are they following? Similar to last week’s study, Razorfish found that the #1 reason for following or ‘friending’ a brand is simple. They want deals.
43% of those that follow a brand on Twitter, do so for exclusive deals or offers. This beat out ‘I am a current customer’ (24%) and for ‘interesting and entertaining content (23%)
Exclusive deals or offers were also the top reason for ‘friending’ brands on Facebook or MySpace
But perhaps the biggest takeaway from the Razorfish study was the data on how online influences (blogs, YouTube, Websites, online customer service, etc) can change brand opinion and ultimately purchase decisions.
65 % of respondents said an online experience has changed their opinion (either positively or negatively) about a brand or the products and services it offers
97% said that experience has influenced their future purchase decisions
In addition, 64% said they have made a first purchase from a brand based purely on a digital experience (e.g., a Website, micro-site, mobile coupon, blog, tweet, email, etc)
Lists are the new wave (my apologies Google) on Twitter. There will probably be a TwitterUSA list by the time I’m done with this post. Is the importance of lists being over-exaggerated? Probably. Facebook lists didn’t change my experience on the social network and Twitter lists probably won’t completely change my experience on the micro-blogging, communication-enabling, social network.
However, the functionality will certainly make the service more manageable, just as to-do-lists and grocery lists make my day more manageable. There’s even a master list for all of the lists (that didn’t take long).
So what are some tips for marketers and PR folks around Twitter lists? Here’s a few that I’ve highlighted on mine.
Welcome to the next, Twitter popularity contest. Before lists, your brand or personal handle was measured by followers or mentions. Now your brand or personal reputation is also measured by lists. Patrick LaForge of the Times’ City room started a “linkers” list of the top re-tweeters and linkers in the Twittersphere. Scoble started a tech pundit list. If you can make your way on these lists, it will be good for your Twitter popularity. For marketers this news isn’t all good. Setting up silos within Twitter where small groups of the most popular Twitterati talk to each other, doesn’t help with trying to infuse brand messaging into the conversation. However, as more lists begin to get curated, think about how a green-thinking brand may be able to reach out to and infiltrate a list focused on sustainability. These micro-communities (within Twitter) will continue to grow, making mass message penetration across Twitter harder, but the fruits of the labor with targeted communication more plentiful.
Bring on the widgets. With an open API, announcements from Twitter are always met with new widgets. No exception in this case. Twitter list widgets (one from Twitter here) allow you to bring your lists and the tweets from the folks on your lists into a blog or other online property. A nice value add, which serves as an aggregation tool. Want to have the entire staff of the New York Times contribute 140 character posts to your blog? Done. If you’d rather have the widget bring more of a community feel, how about making a list that includes the people that comment and contribute most to your online property? Or perhaps the staff of the blog?
Monitoring is easier. This is probably pretty self explanatory, but the ability to create non-public lists which allow you to track media, investors, partners, customers, competitors, etc; for yourself or on behalf of a client will be a great use of lists.
Curing the Data Overload. Lots of folks I chat to have trimmed the list of people they are following on Twitter down to a few hundred folks. They tried more, but that was just too much data and information. However, they seem to miss hearing from some of the folks they previously followed as their need changes. Lists make it a lot easier to follow more people. You can filter the information based on your current intent, which is something that Twitter didn’t allow you to do before. Looking at a new vertical for a new product? Or a new geography? Lists make it easy to filter based on the information you need now.
Support a corporate cause through lists. It will be interesting to see how brands begin to build their own lists with their corporate handles. Jet Blue has built a few lists made up of team members and crew. But think about how brands will begin to build lists based on their social causes. Intel could start its own “green power” list to match its renewable energy drive, then market it to key constituents and share updates with that group.
In his typical fashion, David Carr of the New York Times eloquently sums up in today’s Media Equation column why coverage of business isn’t following the business rebound. Or as he mixes words much better than I, “Business is a Beat Deflated.”
Despite, positive news on the economic front, those that cover business continue to be hit with painful developments, which Carr references:
Last week the Wall Street Journal closed down its Boston office, which had been a long-time staple of deep-dive reporting and investigative journalism. Although they noted that some investigative function will remain, the closing ended Bill Bulkeley’s multi-decade run at the Journal. Bulkeley had been with the Journal for 37 years, covering technology since 1979. He was, up until his exit, the main beat reporter of IBM and EMC, two Fortune 500 staples. (Update: Bill noted to me earlier this week that he was “blindsided” by the closing and was still trying to figure out what was next after 3 decades there).
Fortune announced last week that it will cut back from 25 issues to 18 issues a year. In addition, insiders believe that additional cuts will occur across TIME Inc. magazine properties by the end of the year.
Forbes already announced last week that it will cut a quarter of its staff.
Carr doesn’t mention that his own paper will shed 100 news room jobs by the end of the year.
Carr uses the data to outline his theory that: “While the business of business may be back, the business of covering it with heroic narratives and upbeat glossy spreads most certainly is not. And probably never will be.”
Its hard to argue against and even tougher to explain to clients (especially CEO’s) that have grown accustomed to associating PR success with their appearances on glossy covers. Peter Himler touched on this last week, when looking at Michael Bush’s piece for Ad Age:
“There remains a vast swath of corporate communicators and their bosses in the C-suite for which a Twitterfeed, company blog, YouTube or Facebook page takes a distant backseat to a prominent piece in Business Week or The Journal or an appearance on ‘Today’ or ‘Squawk Box.’ Believe it or not, even a client’s by-line in the world’s most popular (and conversation catalyzing) blog Huffington Post isn’t viewed by many as having the same value as a piece in The New York Times or the New Yorker.”
It’s not going to get any better. As we know, the business of business journalism is broken in the digital age. With business updates by the second, readership for past-tense features are rapidly dwindling. Therefore, ad dollars that still exist, are moving away from the magazines and into new digital channels. However, Carr hits on something much deeper than just the business being broken. He attributes part of the collapse to consumer resentment and being out of date / touch:
“It’s not that the public has lost its appetite for stories about handsome men in three-piece suits who clink whiskey glasses at the end of a long, not-so-hard day while talking smack about their female co-workers. But “Mad Men” pretty much sates that need. The businessman as Colossus is by now a nostalgic impulse.”
It’s a valid argument. Heck, TIME is trying to leverage the resentment as a way to make money on its business coverage (cover above). Unfortunately, that isn’t a good story for TIME’s colleagues at Fortune, the Bill Bulkeley’s of the world or CEO’s looking to get their name in print – or even Google searches. Those that consume business media consume, as Carr notes “hope and aspiration.”
The issue of Fortune on newsstands now, adorned with a digital image of Obama and Google glasses will probably be one of the best-selling issues of the year. Just like this Economist cover probably was. Therefore, when I look back a few weeks ago to Bulkeley telling me in advance of a briefing that he and the WSJ Boston office were kept away from Obama’s cleantech discussion at MIT “because DC owns all Obama coverage,” it was probably a bad sign on a variety of fronts.
There just isn’t much hope in business journalism these days, unless you’re working on cable TV.
