Breaking: Twitter told me not to tweet about Twitter Lists
October 29, 2009
New! Lists. A great way to organize the people you follow and discover new and interesting accounts. (BETA)
Lists are timelines you build yourself, consisting of friends, family, co-workers, sports teams, you name it. You’re part of a small group receiving this feature, so don’t tweet about it yet!
Sure twitter, I won’t tweet about the new Twitter Lists. I’ll just post it here. Enjoy the new feedback about the Twitter lists. So I created one, http://twitter.com/thefounder/adagency
So what do I do now? Evidently it’s treated as a separate sub-account? Exactly what did I just create?
If I can make subsets of my existing account, I can see how that can be used. Companies could have all sorts of subsets, such as the Dell examples below (no they don’t work, just showing an example).
twitter.com/dell/sales
twitter.com/dell/support
twitter.com/dell/enfatico — oh wait…
nifty.
Microsoft in Advertising Search with Facebook, Twitter
October 21, 2009
Evidently Microsoft feels that my status update on Facebook is worth indexing and is willing to shell out millions to know that I just recently went to the bathroom. And how any Ad Agency will use this to better target customers is mind boggling.
In a breaking news report from computer world Microsoft has shelled out millions to get Facebook status updates that consist of real time updates to the site in the form of “my 2 year old just threw up on me” to “When is the train leaving?” to “not feeling so hot making pizza and relaxing” is content that MUST be indexed in real time.
That being stated many facebook users keep their updates private, hence making ever more questions on what exactly they are going to index. Hopefully maybe they will index our private URLs, so my personal one located at http://facebook.com/MarketingAgency will show up for the keyword “Marketing Agency” in bing… not that anyone will ever use Bing to search.
Don’t get it — It’s not content it’s a 1 line update… now I do see some situations where it makes sense, especially on the Twitter side. Breaking news, some big event taking place… yes twitter is helpful, but facebook? People use facebook to find their old college and high school friends, not exactly searching for EDI solution or looking to buy a new car. When was the last time you made a big purchase because you found a Facebook fan page?
Amazing stuff, completely amazing. No wonder Bing already lost 3% of it’s market share the second the ads stopped showing up on TV.
Login with Twitter or Facebook
September 30, 2009
Just an FYI for all Tribble Advertising Agency readers, You can now use your twitter account to login to post comments (or not login if you wish). This means that you can login once on Facebook, Twitter, Disqus, Tribble or even Yahoo for example and then post a comment here.
Just think about it, you can use your Facebook login to comment. No more double logging in, no more pain in the rear to just voice your thoughts. If you are logged into Facebook, Tribble, Twitter, Yahoo or Disqus then you can post here without logging in again.
This is a breakthrough and yet virtually a cave in for blogs such as Tribble Ad Agency, because we’re basically stating that people won’t sign up on smaller blogs, so we have to conform to the bigger sites so people can post here. If it’s not upsetting to many, you have to just think about it deeper.
It means that it’s becoming increasing more difficult to make your own website, get users to subscribe and increase your readership. It also means generally you have to default to the bigger players ID system.
We understand why, because who wishes to have 2000 usernames and passwords? But it’s the evolution of the web, and the bigger players are starting to control it in a much bigger fashion than before..
Enjoy the new reality.
#twitter turns into Google
July 29, 2009
Clearly Twitter is turning themselves into a search engine, abit a weird one. Search was always a highly popular feature, but now with the website redesign, Twitter is virtually a search engine to search 140 character tweets. Will it challenge in search? The chances are slim to none that it will in a traditional sense, but it will challenge Google News due to it’s real time nature.
Google’s fast, but it’s not real time for the most part, even Google News is delayed by some extent. 2 posts yesterday for example went up on Tribble Ad Agency that have yet to be indexed in Google News. But generally they are syndicated within a few minutes, In Twitter’s case however the content is put directly on Twitter’s servers, hence allowing for full realtime search as compared to Google that has to send out a spider to read the content on non-google server.
Now it real life applications, we’re talking only a few minutes different in terms of speed, but those few minutes tend to mean much in breaking news situations, in that case you’re looking at
WPP group plc calls Twitter a “letter writing service”
July 9, 2009
Sir Shorty from WPP group plc has bit the biggest loaf the world has seen in recent times, saying Twitter is a “letter writing service”.
Sir Martin Sorrell equated Facebook and Twitter to writing letters to one’s friends; do you want to see ads on your correspondence? Maybe not, but from my perspective, people are so receptive to ads on their search results it doesn’t seem out of the question.
Because of course posting a tweet is just like writing a letter… it’s so personal that everyone that follows you can see it….. hot stuff… Completely out of touch… twitter may be a no revenue company, but it’s not a letter writing service… Twitter isn’t FedEx…
CNBC has the rest of the story
Is Twitter a failed business?
July 9, 2009
Bankruptcy, failed business, poor execution, dead startup, these are not the terms commonly used to describe Twitter, but the fact is that Twitter has zero revenue and has no valid plans to make money, hence the organization, like all other businesses have no way to continue unless they generate some cash to pay the bills. You cannot live on Venture Capital for the next 20 years, something has to give.
Twitter earlier this year raised an additional 35 million in venture capital. Not a bad sum, but most likely all goes into webhosting for this beast. Unless some revenue is found, eventually that venture capital will dry up and twitter will be face with some hard decisions.
We noted prior that everyone but Twitter is making money from Twitter.
Even stock twits, a company that is nothing more than a souped up blog attached to twitter got nearly a million in seed money.
10 years ago this happened. There is even a movie called startup.com that that showed the disaster of how a well funded startup lost their shirt and went under due to lack of revenue model. Most of the mid to late 1990′s were filled with Twitter clones, sites that got hugely popular and then shut down due to lack of revenue. Wikipedia has a good outline showing some of the firms that went bust..
* Boo.com, spent $188 million in just six months[19] in an attempt create a global online fashion store. Went bankrupt in May 2000.
* Broadcast.com was a web radio company founded as “AudioNet” in September 1995. The organization hugely capitalized on the Dot-com bubble. Broadcast.com was acquired by Yahoo! for $5.9 billion in Yahoo! stock. Yahoo! split the services into separate services and discontinued its functionality. As of May, 2009, | broadcast.com simply redirects to yahoo.com.
* e.Digital Corporation (EDIG): Long term unprofitable OTCBB traded company founded in 1988 previously named Norris Communications. Changed its name to e.Digital in January 1999 when stock was at $0.06 level. The stock rose rapidly in 1999 and went from closing price of $2.91 on 12/31/99 to intraday high of $24.50 on 1/24/00. It quickly retraced and has traded between $0.08 and $0.20 in 2008 and 2009.
* eToys: share price went from the $80 reached during its IPO in May 1999 to less than $1 when it declared bankruptcy in February 2001.
* Freeinternet.com - Filed for bankruptcy in October 2000, soon after cancelling its IPO. At the time Freeinternet.com was the fifth largest ISP in the United States, with 3.2 million users. Famous for its mascot Baby Bob, the company lost $19 million in 1999 on revenues of less than $1 million.
* GeoCities, purchased by Yahoo! for $3.57 billion in January 1999. Expected to shut down in late 2009.
* theGlobe.com - Was a social networking service, that went live in April 1995 and made headlines by going public on November 1998 and posting the largest first day gain of any IPO in history up to that date. The CEO became in 1999 a visible symbol of the excesses of dot-com millionaires.
* GovWorks.com - the doomed dot-com featured in the documentary film Startup.com
* Hotmail - founder Sabeer Bhatia sold the company to Microsoft for $400 million; at that time Hotmail had 9 million members.
* InfoSpace - In March 2000 this stock reached a price $1,305 per share, but by April 2001 its price had crashed down to $22 a share.
* The Learning Company, bought by Mattel in 1999 for $3.5 billion, sold for $27.3 million in 2000
* Think Tools AG, one of the most extreme symptoms of the bubble in Europe: market valuation of CHF 2.5 billion in March 2000, no prospects of having a substantial product (investor deception), followed by a collapse.
* Xcelera.com, a Swedish investor in start-up technology firms.
This list goes on forever, and it’s filled with Twitters …. dozens of them….
Twitter’s office in 2 years if they don’t find revenue fast, nothing but empty desks..
Everyone making money from Twitter but Twitter
June 18, 2009
US$23 million so far been pumped into eleven new Twitter-based companies by VCs and angel investors according to Geek.Com.
$23 Million dollars invested in firms that are based on a company that doesn’t have a revenue model.
The level of WTF is staggering, if something happens to Twitter with it’s no revenue model business plan, then all these startups are going to eat dust. This is mind boggling to say the least.
Some of the better known ones, such as the “made for twitter” bit.ly url shorting service (a tinyurl copycat), or “Stock Twits” a company that shares stock tips (like my inbox doesn’t have enough of them) are quickly showing that even more no-revenue businesses can be setup on top of no-revenue Twitter.
There comes a point where twitter, the company that these startups depend on, has to show some sort of revenue model prior to investing millions.
We wish them luck, they are going to need it.
State Department Orders Twitter not to upgrade - breaking
June 16, 2009
Evidently Twitter has made such an impact on the global information flow that the US State Department has ordered Twitter not to upgrade their servers for the next several days (or longer) so the news can continue to flow out of Iran regarding the madness of the election.
Ever think that 140 characters will be a case of national security?
The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday it had contacted the social networking service Twitter to urge it to delay a planned upgrade that would have cut daytime service to Iranians who are disputing their election. Full Story
Clearly times have changed….
Agency.Com looking for Internship via Twitter
June 12, 2009
Agency.com has posted a help wanted ad via twitter, it can be found here
I strongly urge those to respond quickly to this and if you do know people in need of an internship to please respond to it now. Our understanding is that we are leaking this, as there are only 5 followers… but we expect that to change. It’s unknown what the pay is, or really any details regarding the internship, you’ll have to ask yourself. Good hunting college students… also worth noting, the position is based in the UK, so it’s only open to UK residents or individuals authorized to work in the UK.
Get your books ready guys and girls…
CDC issues Swine Flu Alerts over Twitter
April 27, 2009
The Center for Disease Control has now started issuing Swine Flu Alerts over Twitter. The CDC’s username is @CDCemergency and is issuing real time streams of all the information regarding the CDC’s fight against the Swine Flu.
This is perhaps the first time in history that Twitter is being used for such a large scale planetary fight against a viral pandemic.
Some of the most recent CDC posts on Twitter:
* CDC Swine Flu Update - Conference Call for Clinicians - 2-3PM ET NOW!
* Swine flu - 40 confirmed cases. New York count now at 28.
* Antiviral Drugs and Swine Flu - CDC recommends oseltamivir or zanamivir for treatment and/or prevention.
* CDC testing shows U.S. strain & Mexico strain of swine flu virus are genetic match.
Well worth following the CDC on this one….
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