The Web Uncovered

As Twitter adoption increases, it will become less of an extension to other social networks people use, and more of a platform of its own from which others utilize their structure.  One such example of this is Magpie.  Magpie allows Twitter users to submit their account to Magpie to be occassionally used for ad tweets.  This allows the user to approve specific ads, and limit their frequency.

But the blog SEO Smarty poses some good questions.  For instance… Would engaging in this hurt your following?  Does it dilute Twitter itself?  Will Twitter block this service, as they have yet to monetize Twitter?  Such issues will likely contribute to a lack of adoption by Twitter users, even if advertisers find it worth their while.

While Twitter has seen a huge explosion in use, one must ask, who is using it?  The common assumption is that the Millienials, teens through mid 20s, are the users, as they are the most active segment in social networking.

The Shocker:  While 99% of people ages 18-24 use social media, only 22% use Twitter.

On Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim blog, he break it down further:

Of the 22% that do use Twitter:

• 85 percent follow friends
• 54 percent follow celebrities
• 29 percent follow family
• 29 percent follow companies

The Takeaway:   While Millenials do use Twitter for social networking, and even following their favorite actors or musicians, it seems that companies may have to evaluate if it is really worth their while to promote on Twitter.  For many, it would be time, energy, and money better spent elsewhere.

While Google has dominated the market for PPC as compared to MSN, there is still plenty of people who find it useful enough to keep using.  For those folks, there is a great tool that they put out, which makes the process much more doable once you get the hang out it.  

There is a blog post on Subliminal Pixels which gives a great explanation of the features on the Ad Intelligence PPC Tool, and how to use them.  If you fall into the camp of MSN Ad Intelligence users, be sure to check this out and implement into your strategy… As well as consider switching over to Google Adwords altogether.

For those of you who missed it, there is a new website called WolframAlpha, which was prophesized to be the Google killer, launched last Thursday.  While the hype is mostly hot air, there are some important reasons why we should take note to this new service.

WolframAlpha is a computational engine.  What this means is that it is a database of billions of pieces of information, along with thousands of formulas and models to analyze this data.  Rather than having preprogrammed answers to quiries, it can actually create answers to unposed questions on the spot.  For instance, you can type in “the weather in Bogotá on Obama’s date of birth.”  Low and behold, it was 53 degrees and overcast.  Similarly, it can complete complex calculations for engineering, physics, calculus, genetics, and more, all in less than a second.  

What it’s not:    This is not a Google Killer, it has a different business model and it is a completely different technology.  While Google helps users to find websites based on content, WolframAlpha is completely in-house, as all the computations and information is done on their super-computer clusters.  Furthermore, WolframAlpha is probably not useful to 80% of computer users, as most of use don’t have a need for indepth computation at a moment’s notice.

What it is:   WolframAlpha is the beginning of a new technology that may revolution information dissemination in the coming years.  As the technology becomes more concise with more data and better language-to-command, this is nothing short of revolutionary.  Once adapted to include information regarding items of popular culture, it would become a tool of daily use for everyone with a computer and an internet connection.

Twitter has become increasingly popular as a news source.  While microblogging is anything but content rich, it’s true value added is in its ability to be up to date by the minute.  While in most cases this is not very important to people, there are situations where by the minute is imperative.

There supposedly was a situation at the Twitter Headquarters in San Francisco where the world earthquake spiked as a keyword.  The staff was perplexed, until the earthquake shook their office less than a minute later.  The Tweets were faster than the earthquake!  Less dramatic examples of this can be found.  One is how today many people are following and tweeting about the California State Supreme Court decision regarding Proposition 8.  A lot of Californians are anxiously awaiting to hear what the decision will be.

The larger rammifications of this has dual consequences.  First of all, people will be less likely to turn to print when knews finds them in real time, rather than seeking it out on their own.  The downside is that is drastically changes the business model for traditional print, and even online publications.  Furthermore, a societal side effect would be that news would become less analytical, and much more decontextualized.  Anger towards this technology may be the only  thing that Neil Postman and Rupert Murdoch have in common.

Besides the tried-and-true recommendation or reference letter that runs about a page and is mailed (or, sometimes, emailed), there is now a new breed of recommendation “letter”: brief personal and professional endorsements on business and social networking sites such as LinkedIn.