Tag Archive for 'Twitter'

Is Twitter giving stock options to celebrities?

Published
by
Elias Bizannes
on November 30, 2009
in Business
. 0 Comments

I've just watched Dick Costolo, COO at Twitter, at the Real-Time CrunchUp (on Nov 20th 2009). twitter-logo-smallMichael Arrington's excellent cross-examination skills and subtle pokes make it a thoroughly enjoyable interview (if not comedic) and in the process reveal some interesting challenges facing the Twitter team. The key one internally is about on-boarding, which makes me wonder: why are they incentivising celebrities and how are they doing it?

Let's take step back first and break this down.

"On-boarding" is a Twitter management term, which is to convert a new user that signs up onto the service into a persistent and return user. With all the hype by the Ashton Kutcher/CNN race and the subsequent Oprahfication of Twitter, we've seen this little startup transform from an early adopter tool into a mass culture icon. The key to the transition, was the sudden onslaught of celebrities using it. And if you closely examine the Twitter documents, it's clear there is a very strong relationship with celebrities and the management team.

Why do people start using Twitter?
I first used Twitter on April 15th 2007, which was about 4-6 weeks after I started meeting people in the tech industry. And then six weeks later, I gave it another ago and made a remark implying I didn't get it. I subsequently starting using it because at a meetup in May 2007, Mick Liubinskas and Marty Wells both urged me to get on Twitter as everyone in tech was on it. I essentially forced myself because two people I highly respected in the industry and who held the most status, told me it was crucial for working in tech.

So that's why I started using it. But what about my sister? She doesn't get it. Neither does my brother. Both don't use it. I look at my friends who have signed up and their girlfriends, and the people they follow are all celebrities. They Tweet status updates and don't really engage in discussions which is where the real value of Twitter is. Facebook's a much better environment to post your status with friends, which means watching the flow of Tweets is the only reason why non-techies would use it initially.

Twitter magazine
So it's quite logical to assume the sole reason they are using it is to "stalk" these celebrities. This may be anecdotal evidence, but it surely makes sense: celebrities are key to the growth of Twitter.

Why are celebrities using Twitter?
I can understand it from a broader trend in society where many-to-many communication is how our world is evolving into. I can understand why brands are using it - what started as a defensive PR strategy is now evolving to this broader trend of personal relationships with customers ala Project VRM. But celebrities - really? Do they really want more attention?

Aren't celebrities battling the paparazzi to give them some privacy in their lives? Of all the people who benefit from the trend that is lifestreaming, what do established celebrities have to gain from it? When Kutcher did his one million follower stunt, my Luddite sister claimed it was simply a way for him to re-emerge in the world (as pop culture she gets). But I don't buy that - as that only explains Kutcher - something else is happening. And that something has to be a financial incentive, because giving up privacy is not something celebrities do.

So Twitter, who exactly has stock or options in your company? I know the answer to how you made yourself mainstream, but what did it cost you to get there?

Why Twitter will make advertising an endagered species

Published
by
Elias Bizannes
on May 21, 2009
in Business and Internet
. 0 Comments

twitter-logo-small Twitter has transformed the way we communicate in the world. That's a big deal, because as human beings, the ability to communicate is how we broke free from the rest of the animal kingdom. Our entire society is based on this fact, and so it should come as no surprise that so are some of our biggest industries. Advertising, the billion-dollar industry that funds the web and media, is literally about communicating to the public.

More fundamentally, that's how the market economy operates. There are three elements to a market: conversations, relationships, and transactions. In the industrial age, we forgot about this and came to associate markets as purely transactional: we see a price attached to a mass produced item, and that is meant to convey everything we need to know. But as Doc Searls shares the story with his African friend, the conversation at the market is how selling used to be done, underpinned by a relationship.

My firm PricewaterhouseCoopers is one of the biggest firms in the world. In Australia, we are almost twice the size of our nearest competitor and manage to charge more than our competitors as well without consequence. I've often wondered how this could be, but it was only until I broke down the fundamental components of the market that I realised. Price matters - but only when you don't know anything else. When someone gets to know someone at the firm, they have conversations - and build a relationship. Those relationships are what makes PwC the behemoth it is. It's not that price is irrelevant, but now with additional information to inform an economic buyer, it's no longer the sole determinant.

Demand and Supply, sitting in a tree
Twitter co-founder Isaac "Biz" Stone recently defended the company's stance on advertising as a revenue model. He rightly says the banner ad model is dead - no kidding. But his brilliance comes through when he says that they are exploring ways in "facilitating connections between businesses and individuals in meaningful and relevant ways". Those words so simply explain more than just Twitter's opportunity, but the entire future of advertising.

My half-cousin Alex Lambousis has created his own fashion label. Primarily a Jeans business, he controls the entire design process as he owns an industrial laundry, and so can compete on the global scale with high-end jean product. Like any startup, he's trying to crack new markets.

Think about Alex's issue. He's a wholesaler, who relies on retail outlets to sell his product - not exactly the best of customers. He's reliant on celebrities wearing his clothes, and negotiating special rack space in high end fashion outlets, to get exposure of his world-class product. But it's a hard market to crack - he's had success, but is not where he wants to be. What's a man to do?

Have a look at this search query I just did on Twitter's community. Twitter allows you - in real time - to search for what people are talking about right now. My first attempt, without trying to be creative with the search string, yielded the following results:
new jeans - Twitter Search

A new customer just appeared on the market half a minute ago. A few of the others can be identified as market opportunities. Imagine if Alex simply responded to them, giving them a discount on his range or just pointing them to a blog post where he can show case his in-depth knowledge. Before the Internet, for a wholesaler like Alex to make money, he relied on advertising in fashion magazines. Now he can interact directly with his customers, and even if he can't make a sale - he can at least invest in a relationship for future sales.

He's having a conversation and building relationships. Price is no longer the only source of information for the customer. Those curves on the demand and supply curve have now been personified. That's better than some poster stuck on a billboard - that's a return to how our world used to work before factory's pumped our standard-issue Model T's.

I might not have solved Twitter's revenue challenge in this post, but I sure as hell am excited about the future opportunities afforded by tools like Twitter for the economy.

Google should acquire Friendfeed, the leader in the real time web

Published
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Elias Bizannes
on May 20, 2009
in Trends
. 0 Comments

May is real time month: everyone is now saying the latest trend for innovation is the real time web. Today, we hear that Larry Page, co-founder of Google, confirming to Loic Le Meur that real time search was overlooked by Google and is now a focus for their future innovation.

With all this talk of Google acquiring Twitter, I’m now wondering why isn’t Friendfeed seen as the best candidate to ramp up Google’s real time potential.

Friendfeed does real time better than anyone else. Facebook rules when it comes to the activity stream of a person – meaning, tracking an individuals life and to some extent media sharing. Twitter rules for sentiment, as it's like one massive chat room, and to some extent link sharing. But Friendfeed, quite frankly, craps all over Facebook and Twitter in real time search.

Why? Three reasons:

1) It’s an aggregator. The fundamental premise of the service is in aggregating people’s lives and their streams. People don’t even have to ever visit Friendfeed other than an initial sign up. Once someone confirms their data sources, Friendeed has a crawler constantly checking an individuals life stream AND that's been validated as their own. It doesn’t rely on a person Tweeting a link, or sharing a video – it’s done automatically through RSS.

2) It’s better suited for discovery. The communities for Twitter, Facebook, and Friendfeed are as radically different as America, Europe, and Asia are in cultures. People that use Friendfeed literally sit there discovering new content, ranking it with their “likes” and expanding it with their comments to items. It’s a social media powerhouse.

3) It’s better technology. Don’t get me wrong, Facebook has an amazing team. But they don’t have the same focus. With less people and less money – but with a stricter focus – Friendfeed actually has a superior product specifically when it comes to real time search. Their entire service is built around maximizing it.

Up until now, I’ve been wondering about Friendfeed's future. It has a brilliant team rolling out features I didn’t even realise I needed or could have. But I couldn't see the value proposition – or rather, I don’t have the time to get the value out of Friendfeed because I have a job that distracts me from monitoring that stream!

But now it’s clear to me that Friendfeed is a leader in the pack - a pack that's now shaping into a key trend of innovation. And given the fact the creator of Gmail and Adsense is one of the co-founders, I couldn’t imagine a better fit for Google.

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