What I Learned at 140 | The Twitter Conference (round-up)
June 16, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
Well its been a couple of weeks since the 140 | The Twitter Conference ended. The Twitter Conference (#twrcon) has come and gone. A NYC Twitter conference – 140 Character Conference – is now on (#140conf). And I completed my 8-part round-up of my learnings from my experience at #140tc.
- The Power of Presence. Insights from Alex Payne, Twitter API Lead.
- I am a Twitter God(ess) and So Can You! The View From Twitter Stardom with @ijustine, @missrogue and @davepeck.
What I Learned at 140 | The Twitter Conference (part 7 of 8)
June 10, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
“You can’t own social media. You can only interact with it.”
@JetBlue (Morgan Johnston)
Joining Morgan on a panel about corporate use of Twitter were Jon Zilber of Palm and Ross Mayfield, Founder of SocialText. Morgan is a pioneer in the use of Twitter for the purposes of customer service. He has assembled what amounts to a set of best practices based on his real live experiences with @JetBlue:
- Support of organization. If you engage your customers in real-time, they will expect response in real-time. For a small, single product company, this may not be a big deal. But for a large organization, providing those on the front lines of Twitter access to people and answers in a timely fashion is critical.
- Don’t punt to an Intern. I’ve got nothing against student interns (as I’m sure Morgan doesn’t), but to be successful you need a passionate person with deep knowledge and/or immediate access to subject matter experts.
- CoTweet to delegate. JetBlue is testing CoTweet as a tool to assign multiple responses to different people simultaneously. Early results look promising. Read more
What I Learned at 140 | The Twitter Conference (part 6 of 8)
June 7, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
“Even with a simple hash tag, there is a learning curve.”
Soren Macbeth
Co-Founder / CEO
Stocktwits
Soren (@sorenmacbeth) joined a panel with Brian Solis (@briansolis) of PR 2.0 fame. Brian unveiled a new tool, Twitterverse, that attempts to map the Twitter Universe. (Interesting when searching for Brian’s Twitterverse image, I found 17 Ways to Visualize Twitter.) Unfortunately I missed most of Brian’s talk – he has written a good recap of The Twitter Conference and TWTRCON, complete with his broader perspective on Twitter on his blog post: Is Twitter Evolving from the Facebook to the Myspace of Microblogs? Analyzing Twitter trends and demographics.
Soren shared his experience in founding and building StockTwits. His original idea was to develop detailed and complex algorithms, reputation indicators and stock pricing information. That idea evolved into something dramatically simpler with the use of the “$” tag. I missed whether this was something Soren pushed on Twitter or Read more
What I Learned at 140 | The Twitter Conference (part 5 of 8)
“Yahoo! is a great training ground.”
Anamitra Banerji
Product Management
Twitter
I’m not sure Carol Bartz would be thrilled with Anamitra’s (@anamitra) perspective on his time at Yahoo! but hopefully it has prepared him well to take the helm of what is likely the most challenging and exciting product management opportunity in technology today.
When (and how) will Twitter monetize itself?
Anamitra is looking at advertising and other commercial applications of twitter. He gave examples of promotions (coupons), functioning much like advertising, that exist on the site today. He feels site banner advertising is an “uninteresting thing to do” but wouldn’t rule it out as something Twitter would consider.
He would not give a time line as to when monetization of Twitter would occur: ”soon”. He noted that Google launched in 1996 and didn’t monetize itself until 2001. Could a similar lag be in store for Twitter?
What is on Twitter’s product roadmap?
Anamitra disclosed what is not on the roadmap – a tv show! (Met with scattered applause from the audience). Beyond that he offered little but “experimentation with business features.” Noting that 60% of people who sign up for twitter don’t return, Anamitra feels that Twitter’s out-of-the-box experience could be improved but didn’t offer specifics.
I hope this guy has a lot more up his sleeve than he was willing to disclose.
What are the best examples of businesses using Twitter?
Anamitra recognized that as a small team (currently 45 employees, rumored to be doubling to 90 by the end of the year), Twitter “can’t create all the cool stuff.” He felt that businesses have a great opportunity to come up with interesting ways of using twitter to promote themselves. Ironically, he called out United Airlines (not exactly known for its innovative ways) for its special twitter-only airfare special.
He didn’t spend much time on the topic but did point out that perhaps the biggest opportunity that Twitter is sitting on is that of a rich and moderately structured data set. Companies that can figure out how to best tap into this data to create new services will do well.
So there you go Tweeps, consider yourself informed and inspired.
I’m wanting more . . . more later.
- The Power of Presence. Insights from Alex Payne, Twitter API Lead.
- I am a Twitter God(ess) and So Can You! The View From Twitter Stardom with @ijustine, @missrogue and @davepeck.
- Don’t Take the Drive to Manic Feature Explosion. What Makes a Good Twitter App.
- Twitter business start-ups are combination socialist and radical markets. Twitter Strategies: Real-World Success Stories.
- WTF, No Twitter TV!? Direction from Anamitra Banerji, Twitter Product Management.
- Even with a simple hash tag, there is a learning curve. Soren MacBeth, Co-Founder / CEO of StockTwits.
- You can’t own social media. You can only interact with it. Corporate Use of Twitter by @JetBlue.
- Twitter will transform conferences & events. Surprising takeaways from an in-person Twitter conference experience.