Archive for the ‘Twitter’ Category

A Small Market Perspective

October 11, 2009

Twitter’s advanced search features can be used to locate Tweets coming from Twitter accounts within a specific mile radius of a city or state.

Twitter Advanced Search

Twitter Advanced Search

As you can see from the results below, I still haven’t figured out how to use Twitter’s real time search to help generate prospects, leads or sales efficiently.

Real Time Search Google Adwords

Real Time Search Google Adwords

Has anyone?

Real Time Search Lead Generation

Real Time Search Lead Generation

Maybe Twitter hasn’t figured out how to make money from their service because Twitter account holders haven’t yet figured out how to make money on Twitter either.  ( Of course this excludes the Twitterers selling “How to make money on Twitter” books and tapes…

My First WordPress Blog Tweet to Twitter

October 8, 2009

WordPress.com has announced a new feature called Publicize which let WordPress publishers tweet their blog posts directly to their Twitter account.

The feature is enabled from WordPress Dashboard’s → My Blogs admin page.

Enable WordPress.com Account To Tweet

Enable WordPress.com Account To Tweet

Once enabled, WordPress users are directed through an authorization procedure to confirm that they want to connect their WordPress.com blog and their Twitter account.

Wordpress Twitter Authorization

Wordpress Twitter Authorization

After Twitter allows access to a WordPress blog, the blogger’s account will display a message showing a successful connection has been made.

Successful WordPress.com Connection to Twitter

Successful WordPress.com Connection to Twitter

I assume publishing a WordPress blog post then automatically Tweets the post and it’s WordPress shortened url (Wp.Me) to the previously selected Twitter account.

Twitter Tweets Per Day Spike

September 27, 2009

This past week, Twitter announced they were receiving a $100 million investment from both existing investors and some new ones.

Hitwise analyst Bill Tancer wrote a post suggesting Twitter’s traffic may have already peaked and leveled out.

Indeed, several online audience measurement services have suggested for a month or longer that Twitter new visitor traffic and existing traffic retention may have already peaked.

However, last week Twitter announced a new partnership with AOL’s AIM instant messaging service that may have impacted Twitter’s daily Tweet volume which appears to more than doubled at least according to GigaTweet.

Tweets Per Day

Tweets Per Day

I commented on the Hitwise blog about the apparent spike in traffic and Hitwise has chosen not to add my comments.

This isn’t the first time analyst Tancer hasn’t posted my comments.

The last time was when MySpace downstream referrals indicated they would be an attractive take over target – which they became when News Corp. bought them.

Regardless of whether a commenter is right or wrong, Hitwise’s Bill Tancer is the only blogger who’s blog I have commented on who won’t post an opionion contrary to his own.

I wonder why?

Advice to Client Regarding Social Media and Online Display Advertising

September 14, 2009

The following is my response to a request from a client regarding my opinion on social media and online display advertising.

There seems to have been an uptick in the number of recommendations suggesting businesses begin or increase their budgets for social media and online display advertising campaigns.

Dear Client,

The efficacy rhetoric of both social network and display advertising  is increasingly on the rise as Microsoft/Yahoo and Facebook/Twitter attempt to attract more display brand advertising dollars from traditional media who are losing the war for the consumer’s attention.

The social / display advertising camps wouldn’t have to be selling their merits – if their results did their speaking for them.

The reason the former don’t is because their product produces inferior results while the latter has yet to yield any results if any results at all.

These are some of the reasons why the Yahoo/Facebook/Twitter market cap / value is 1/8 Google’s $150 Billion.

However, as with everything else – there are exceptions.

I have had a small percentage of deals convert with display while others have not.

Testing is the only way to prove or disprove whether or not display advertising will work for a particular business.

Display ads can be geo-targeted but its not as precise because it relies on other publishers data and it can have placement, targeting and measurement issues.

The first thing to do is to test whether text ads convert in their display network first. If so, then try image / display ads.

Unless of course a testing supports and fulfills a brand’s impression objectives in target markets and isn’t held to the same level of results performance as search.

If a display advertising test meets its objectives, then launch trials with Yahoo / MSN publishing partners.

Twitter Audience: Reaching 1,000 Twitter Followers

September 12, 2009

Today, my Twitter account briefly reached 1,000 Twitter Followers.

1000 Twitter Followers

1000 Twitter Followers

Having reached 1,000 Twitter “audience members” presents an obvious question: which is more valuable – a 1,000 person social media audience or 1,000 person search audience?

Twitter Local Trending Topics and Google Maps

August 30, 2009

Happn.in is a Twitter tool that shows what people are tweeting about locally in 80 cities around the world.

Local Twitter Trends by Market

Local Twitter Trends by Market

Drilling down into each city produces a list of several hundred to several thousand Twitter account holders who have self identified their locations in their Twitter accounts.

Visitors to Happn.in can click through to each list to scan for potential Twitter accounts to follow or broadcast their message to everyone in a particular market via their Talk to Your City feature.

Talk To Your City

Talk To Your City

Rakshith Krishnappa has also created a local Twitter trends map for Happn.in using their API and Google Maps.

Local Twitter Trends

Local Twitter Trends

Want to find out what Twitter users are saying in any particular market?

Just click on the push pin and the top 10 subjects being Tweeted are displayed inline on Google Maps.

Local Twitter Trends by City

Local Twitter Trends by City

Pretty cool.

Twitter Accounts Being Hacked?

August 18, 2009

Today I received a direct message from my personal trainer that was out of character for two reasons.

1. The direct message was about weight loss – which neither of us are in need of.

2. My personal trainer barely knows how to use Twitter let alone direct message me.

Twitter Direct Message

Twitter Direct Message

Ordinarily, I would have chalked up this type of abnormal behavour as just that – abnormal.

However, my personal trainer is a pretty normal guy.

Once I received his direct message this evening I called him and asked him if he had sent it and he said no -what is it?

His response in turn made me question the series of Tweets his account posted yesterday that were also out of character.

His Tweets were about how much money he was making on Google.

Again totally out of character for my personal trainer.

Twitter Hacked

Twitter Hacked

What was even more revealing about his Tweets was they were each posted via API.

API is a term my personal trainer doesn’t know the meaning of – let alone have access to or use.

I decided to search Twitter for the url embedded in his Twitter Direct Message to see if it was being widely Tweeted by other Twitter users.

Twitter Accounts Being Hacked

Twitter Accounts Being Hacked

Yep – appears to be.

Based on the frequency and number of accounts Tweeting with this particular weight loss domain embedded in each Tweet leads me to conclude: Twitter accounts are being hacked en masse.

A search for “direct message” in Twitter search also reveals Twitter account holders asking their followers whether they sent the “weight loss” direct message or not.

The hacked accounts appear to be mostly lower Tweet volume accounts.

Twitter Down: Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDOS)

August 6, 2009

Twitter.com is offline and has been for several hours now.

The Twitter blog says the service has been under a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack.

Twitter DDOS Attack Outage

Twitter DDOS Attack Outage

40+ million people like myself from around the world have come to rely on Twitter.

Recently, I became concerned with Twitter’s ability to preserve let alone archive my Tweets so I set up my on rudimentary ReTweetings backup on my personal blog.

Why?

Because, if Twitter can’t keep their service up – how can I trust they will keep my Tweets preserved?

If Twitter hopes to become the “pulse of the planet” they will first need to figure out how to check and keep their own pulse beating.

Twitter Analyzer: Twitter Audience Segmentation

August 3, 2009

According to its site, TwitterAnalyzer.com is the most advanced Twitter account analytics system in the world.

I am not sure how their claim can be confirmed, however their site does parse Twitter account data into segments I hadn’t yet seen.

Twitter Analyzer users can view an account by Tweets, Chats, Popularity, Reach, Subjects, HashTags, Links and Apps.

Twitter Analyzer Tweets

Twitter Analyzer Tweets

Tweets graph a Twitter account’s Tweet activity over a thirty day period.

Twitter Analyzer Reach

Twitter Analyzer Reach

Twitter Analyzer reach charts the reach of a Twitter account daily over a thirty day period.

Twitter Analyzer Subjects

Twitter Analyzer Subjects

My favorite charts at Twitter Analyzer are the ones for Subjects and Hashtags.

Subjects produces a graph of the top ten subjects tweeted from an account in both descending order and via pie chart.

Twitter Analyzer Hashtags

Twitter Analyzer Hashtags

Hashtags presents Twitter account hashtag data also in both a descending frequency order and by pie chart.

If you have someone you are following who has Tweeted a lot, Twitter Analyzer tools can provide data centric insight into which segment of the Twitter audience their messaging most likely resonates.

AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford #AOSS09

July 31, 2009

I virtually attended my first conference this week at Stanford University called the AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford.

This year was the seventh addition of the conference and was titled: “Meet the New Captains of Innovation”.

I stumbled onto the conference while doing research and ended up “attending” two days worth of sessions via my laptop even though I was 1,600+ miles from Stanford.

From the Summit at Stanford conference website:

AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford

AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford

On July 28-30, leaders in the global technology industry will gather at the Athens of the Information Age for high-level debates on trends and opportunities.

Who Attends?
Summit at Stanford, features the most innovative companies, eminent technologists, influential investors, and journalists in keynote presentations, panel debates and private company CEO showcases. Our goal is to identify the most promising entrepreneurial opportunities and investments.

Indeed.

880 people attended the three day event in person while thousands of visitors like myself virtually attended the conference from 80 countries according to show founder Tony Perkins.

I particulary enjoyed the innovative interactivity of the show.

Web visitors could log on to the Stanford conference via Vivu.TV to view the panel discussions while also asking them questions via chat or Twitter during the Q&A segments.

AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford

AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford

I aggregated conference attendees Tweets via Twitter and then re-tweeted the comments I found most interesting.

I believe my approach to virtually attending this conference, aggregating and then rebroadcasting my findings was innovative in itself.

I enjoyed every panelists contributions particularly the comments about Silicon Valley’s origins from Norm Fogelsong, General Partner at Institutional Venture Partners.

The AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford has set the standard for how all other conferences should be run.

All my notes from the conference are posted on TimothyCohn.com.