Opinion: The Value of Twitter - Would I sell my first born?
AUSTRALIA | Tuesday, 24 March 2009 | Views [704] | Comments [4]
Well, no.
Sure, those first few months were horrendous, the witching hours, the incessant crying, projectile...err, hang on, what am I writing about?
Ah yes... What would I be prepared to live with to ensure that I can enjoy the now daily ritual that is Twittering? Tweeting to my tweeps. Gettin' twitty. Building connections, partnerships, friendships and all that stuff !
It must survive !
Sure, Twitter is not short of VC funding, nor conjecture on how it plans to monetize the now stratospherically popular social networking 'can't eat gotta tweet' site.
Eventually, the model must be found ! because if Twitter folds, you're going to get a global meltdown not seen since the great Milli Vanilli scam of the 80's, perhaps even worse.
So would you...
1. Yield to the mind meld of behavioral advertising
It seems to have worked for Facebook. I'm definitely 'Hanging with under 30's', 'Lost 50 pounds in 20 days', have 'Swung with Singles', 'Learnt to Tango' and 'Given birth painlessly'.
All that from telling Facebook I'm 37 years old, male, married and would like to learn the tango.
Ok, so they got one right and yes I did click through. Who wouldn't want to lose 50 pounds in 20 days!
So imagine if Twitter got the algorithm right and managed to meld targeted ads into your twitter stream of which 3/10 ( that's 30% for the marketers who like it that way) were actually relevant and you did click through.
Given the 54 gadzillion daily tweets, I'm sure the revenue raised from an effective advertising program would enable Twitter to remove the VC's off the doormat.
I would imagine there might even be enough to go 50/50 with any number of international charities and punch a sizable hole in the worlds ills ! We've already seen a multitude of charities supported through some brilliant, socially conscious tweeters.
So would you cop it?
Would you embrace ads in your tweet stream in order to be able to run off to the toilet and tweetdump with total abandon (sorry, but you know you have, admit it and we'll move on).
Or
2. Pay not to be bombarded with 'behavioral' ads
In order to ensure you can continue to 'go gansta with yo tweeps', keep your tweet stream pure with only the best of Brogan, magic of Mashable and the not so boring world of WorldNomads, what would you pay?
$5 a month? $10 a month?
What price would you put on a clean Twitter experience? or what investment would you make to keep it running?
Maybe if we don't, then Twitter will have to find a way to keep the lights on, and advertisers, KPI-ROI-R-E-S-P-E-C-T are waiting at the door to drive a wedge into our behavioral not so subconscious, and I'm probably one of them.
What will it be Tweeter?
Well as we know, it's not up to us, no matter how many posts we write, forum arguments we have, or the power of pro blogger celebs, it's in the hands of Twitter. (Note to Twitter: Either way, please don't F*^%& it up!)
Chris Noble
General Manager
WorldNomads.com
chris[at]worldnomads.com
twitter.com/WorldNomads
Chris
Noble is the General Manager of WorldNomads.com and Co-Founder of
FootprintsNetwork.org. He is NOT a writer for Mashable (obviously), has never spoken to Chris Brogan and has only been caught twittering on the toilet once, by his son, whose too young to understand (or forgive).
Tags: twitter, tweets, social media, worldnomads.com, world nomads, social networking, mashable, chris brogan
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