bhavishya_KANJHAN

Here I am, blogging live from the great Gmail crash of September 2009. Every single group column in my Tweetdeck window is filled with tweets about Gmail. It took about 10 minutes for ‘Gmail’ to become Trending topic #1 on Twitter. The number of tweets posted in those 10 minutes is just shy of 24000, and this is of course only the first batch of people who happened to be online when Gmail went down. I would think the number of ‘Gmail tweets/minute’ is likely to go up.

With all this going on, I can’t help but wonder Twitter really has a long road ahead of it if it wants to become the pulse of the planet. And with Google Wave on the horizon, things aren’t likely to get any easier.

(Image via @holaphil)

You don’t need to look far to find critics of Twitter. There’s as many opponents of the service as there are proponents. The former argue that Twitter is just a ‘fad’. An April 2009 report by Nielsen online says that Twitter has a retention rate of less than 40%, which means more than 60% of the users who sign up and try the service do not become regular users of it. So it may be. But the debate on whether Twitter is a ‘Revolution’ or not will last for some more time.

Let’s change tracks and look at something that was a revolution, Napster, which I doubt I need to give you the history of. Napster brought a revolution in the music industry, changing forever the way people acquired and consumed music. While Napster (in its original form) may now be defunct, the spirit behind is still alive, in the various copycat software that followed it, in the technology that was – in part – inspired by it (Bittorrent) , but most importantly in the attitude and behaviour of the people today. A report by Morgan Stanley’s, now hotshot, teen intern says teens are “very reluctant” to pay for music and spend more time streaming it off websites. But the more important change was in the way we acquire music. Music purchased these days is now accessible everywhere on and on each of the multiple devices a user owns. Unlike in the past where a buyer would pay full price for a crappy album with one acceptable track, he can now choose to purchase just that one track and he now has a playlist full of hits. iTunes is the biggest music store in the world today, having beat all other brick and mortar music stores, distributing DRM free music in a similar manner to what Napster did; digitally.

The point I’m desperately trying to make is it doesn’t matter if Twitter, or for that matter any of the other popular Social Networking Sites, die out in a few years. The web has seen its social meter rise through the years – first with forums, then reviews, ratings, wiki, social websites etc – and will certainly continue on that trend. The people (and businesses) that are social today, will continue to be social then. Brands that did not directly engage their consumers till yesterday, are doing so today and will do so tomorrow. Companies that didn’t see social websites as a source of revenue/lead generation till yesterday, are doing so today and will do so tomorrow. Researchers who did not see the social interaction as a source of first hand knowledge till yesterday, are doing so today and will do so tomorrow. The one to one and one to many channels of communication that we’ll now be used will become an important element of an individual/businesses’ communication strategy.

All the activities I mentioned above will continue even in the absence of Twitter, albeit on a newer and more evolved platform. After all, Facebook and Twitter are also evolutionary products of others (and themselves) before them. So maybe it’s okay if Twitter isn’t a revolution because it’s evolution into the product it is today has brought to center the importance of the Social element of the web which will persist when/if Twitter is superseded by something newer.

Image Credit : Tegan

A report by Matthew Robson – Morgan Stanley’s 15 year old intern – has got a lot of people paying attention as it presents “inside”  information on trends, some of which has turned conventional belief on its head. One part of it says teens aren’t using Twitter because they believe no one is reading their tweets. 16 year old Daniel Brusilovsky over at TechCrunch one ups Robson’s post and says teens are also afraid that Twitter isn’t ’safe’ (when compared to Facebook) and that texting is expensive. Pfft, what about the public MySpace profile which were and still are quite the rage among teens.

A comment on TechCrunch’s post by James Stern reasons teens avoiding Twitter as “teens don’t care about news, they want to talk to friends and see and comment on their pictures, and Myspace and facebook are better for that.”

James has got it spot on. while it’s true that Twitter is more what you make of it, it is most definitely less of a Social Network than it is a micro-blogging /link sharing / information sharing platform.

For a lot of the first time users, the update box is seen as something to update their ’status’ – a mindset users carry over from Facebook , which we know teens enjoy and love. Ironically the update box on Facebook has moved away from only status to allow sharing and distribution online – a la Twitter.

But the reason Twitter does well with teens is because they don’t care about networking – the act of creating/extending a network – as much as they do in their existing network itself. They would rather talk/share with their existing network rather than with unknown or “random” people on the internet.

Your average teen doesn’t care about real time search or news. In fact, the way Twitter has been pushed into the mainstream could be one of the factors pushing teens away from Twitter. Simply put, the utility that the mature users of Twitter have derived from it does not appeal to the teen segment.

That being said, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing that the adoption of Twitter among teens is low. Not everything new and exciting needs to be approved by that segment. Maybe it’s okay if Twitter isn’t as “hip” as it is resourceful.

You don’t have to look around a lot to find a number of articles on how to get a high number of followers. Some tell you to adopt a borderline spammy approach of following hundreds of users a day, others advise tweeting a lot so the followers come to you instead of the other way around. But before all that how many of us stop and think of what we are trying to gain by getting a high follower count; is it even important to you as an individual? This gives rise to the important question of ‘What is your TwitPurpose ?’ It’s only after answering that question will you be able to decide as to what following-follower strategy you will adopt.

One view is to look to Twitter to build Value. Value may be keeping abreast of the latest news (or gossip), gaining knowledge or even as a source of humour. The quality of tweets from the people you choose to follow is of greater importance. In this case it comes down to who you follow.

The other view is to extend your Reach with twitter. To be able to deliver your content, message or products to a wide audience is an exciting proposition to many. The quality of people doesn’t matter here as the emphasis is on quantity; how many you follow.

Technically speaking it is possible to have both Value and Reach together as the former could be in following a restricted set of people with the latter reflecting in your follower count. But that is not the case for most users as follower/following count tend to be more close than further away. So users are then expected to make a decision on what they wish to achieve from their efforts on Twitter. The decision, quite simply, could boil down to Quantity v/s Quality. Neither choice is wrong, it’s just a derivant of your Twitpurpose

The obsession to know, in quantified detail, the return achieved on the investment made (both in terms of time and money) in marketing efforts is not new. Especially with regards to a brand, any initiative or project is generally met with the same question ‘What is the ROI?’ . The real question we should, and Raj Anand of Kwiqq did ask is if trackable marketing is the be-all and end-all for brands?

The problem of the lack of directly quantifiable results exists from the days of traditional marketing. The effectiveness of TV & Radio campaigns, Billboards, or Pamphlet distribution could not be definitively determined because a variety of external factors came into play which could enhance or negate those efforts. However when online marketing was first introduced, a conscious effort was made know how effective the campaign was. Analytic tools provided detailed numbers and information on users and potential customers. Location, time spent on site, pages viewed, time spent on each page; all that information was now available in the hands of the online marketer. The most important thing however was that despite the open nature of the Internet, marketers still retained control of the image of their brand, for the most part.

The arrival and adoption of Social media changed that though. Numbers on engagement and conversations were not available; atleast not in terms of how they affected the brand. Most importantly the managers had started to lose control over their brand image as the consumers of the brand were becoming co-creators of it as were the former controllers (managers). The way Seth Godin sees it, marketing is both an art and a science and the marketer has to choose what hat to wear; that of the scientist or that of the artist.

Working on the new marketing initiatives requires an increasing use of the Artist hat. The results of its employment, once again, aren’t necessarily quantifiable, but they’re still in line with the original aims of the brand; to acquire new customers and retain existing ones. The second aim is especially catered to as individual two way communication initiated by the brand (or its representative) with the consumer facing a problem (with the product/service) will bring the consumer from the negative point to a point further down the positive line than if a customer were to have not had a problem to begin with. And it is this function, of adding value, to the brand (and its perception of it) that serves to be the unquantifiable, yet still essential benefit of Social Media.