Twitter's new retweet feature paves the way for more commercial usage
Rage is a common response when social media sites make minor tweaks to their services, and characteristically, Twitter's new retweet change is causing lots of outrage from users (Gawker headlined its post "Re-Tweet Redesign Helps the Rich Get Richer on Twitter").
Trying to solve some of the issues surrounding the "RT" functionality, Twitter has done away with it completely in favor of reposting a tweet from the original twitterer, with a link to the person who retweeted it (an example is above).
There are some drawbacks to the new approach, but helps Twitter do two things that will become increasingly important to its business model: track tweets and make them more reliable for professional users.
Is online video destined to look like television programming?
Terrestrial television has been gutted by commercial fast-forwarding, but online that is not an option. And as much as people complain about pre-roll ads, they are increasingly watch them. As Brian Stelter notes in The New York Times today: "News Web sites are starting to look a lot less like newspapers and a lot more like television."
Can the networks reproduce the success of their old business model online by creating a limited quantity of quality video programming? Yes and no.
Is this Listia ad on TechCrunch a 'scam' offer?
The other day, I was checking the latest posts on TechCrunch and came across a promotion promising a free pack of MySpace branded playing cards. I love free things and I clicked, hoping that my next game of poker would have a MySpace theme.
Instead I was greeted by a charity auction on a service called Listia. To bid, I needed 'credits'. The parallels to the scam offers controversy I wrote about on Monday started to became apparent.
What customers want: a benevolent Big Brother?
In the movie What Women Want, Nick Marshall (played by Mel Gibson) has an accident and finds himself able to hear what the women around him are really thinking. At first he uses it to his advantage selfishly before he falls in love.
Chances are you're not going to suffer from an accident that gives you Nick Marshall-like abilities, but fortunately when it comes to finding out what customers want, market research can tackle the challenge.
Google Go: was the name already taken?
Yesterday Google announced that it was releasing Go, a new open source programming language that's designed to aid in rapid development while at the same time supporting the latest technologies, like multi-processor CPUs.
There's only one problem: there's apparently already a programming language named 'Go'.
Razorfish: Social media is helping established brands. But what about everyone else?
Razorfish has released its annual study into consumer behavior online and this year's results have a lot to do with social media. According to Feed: The Razorfish Digital Brand Experience Report, many consumers are engaging with brands online to receive exclusive promotions or discounts.
The study also found that people who actively engage with a brand digitally — from participating in a contest to downloading a mobile application — are substantially more inclined to purchase and recommend that brand to others.
The question for brands is how to create digital events that impress consumers. Because negative experiences online have a bad influence on the bottom line for brands.
FOX plants its digital flag with Strategy Room
The cable companies may be hard at work planning their transition to online video with TV Everywhere, but Fox News has another method of bridging the gap between television and online — developing talent and shows in real time.
Every week day, over eight hours of programming are streamed online from Strategy Room, Fox News' web video "network." The online-only program operates out of a small corner of News Corp.'s New York office, and may not be getting insane traffic, but it's been a proving ground for Fox talent. And it appears to be working.
Sh*t My Dad Says: from Twitter to television in less than five months
Want to break into Hollywood? Try breaking into Twitter first. Just ask 28 year-old Justin Halpern and he'll tell you: Twitter can be your golden ticket.
On August 3, Halpern set up an account, @shitmydadsays. The purpose: share some of his 73 year-old dad's wisdom with the world. You see, Halpern had just moved back in with the folks and figured that some of the things his dad told him might be worth rebroadcasting on Twitter. Turns out he was right: @shitmydadsays now has over 700,000 followers.
Did CoTweet just take Twitter's business model, and future customers?
When it comes to launching a business model, Twitter has been as slow as molasses. Co-founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone are always quick to point out that their focus right now is on the product, not on making money.
One of the potential business models that has been discussed: brand management tools and data access for brands. But what happens if Twitter takes too long and third parties take over the market?
A book with a view: Andrew Sullivan's crowdsourced book pricing scheme
Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish blog may be best known for political content, but its most popular feature is party agnostic and user generated. Over the last three years, readers have submitted photos of scenes snapped from their windows, for a weekly featured titled "The View From Your Window."
Amid hundreds of photos and growing interest, The Atlantic has now chosen 200 of those images and produced a coffee table book. The front and back images have been crowd sourced. But that's not as interesting as the price tag, which depends on how many people purchase the book.
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
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Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
