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Posts Tagged ‘twitter’

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Is Tumblr the Perfect Social Media Service?

A year ago, Tumblr was a solid micro-blogging service with some noterity, including the fact that one of its investors, Union Square Ventures, was also an investor in this thing called Twitter.

In many respects, Tumblr was a Web 2.0 success story that didn’t get as much credit as it deserved. The New York-based company had more than two million unique visitors a month and a loyal following but it didn’t get anywhere near the attention of Twitter, Facebook, Linked or Foursquare.

That was then, this is now.

For whatever reason, Tumblr has become the belle of the social media ball. According to Compete.com, the number of unique visitors has more than tripled in the past year to 8.5 million. As well, Tumblr has attracted glowing coverage from high-profile publications such as the New York Times.

So, what happened? Why has Tumblr emerged as one of the hottest social media properties, while Foursquare has failed to live up to all the hype and bullish expectations.

This is just a theory but Tumblr may be the perfect social media service.

It’s a hybrid between a blog, Twitter and Facebook. Tumblr can be used as a blogging platform but it is also designed to showcase photographs, videos, links, quotes, chats, and audio.

Tumblr fits nicely into how a growing number of people like and want to use social media because it doesn’t require as much work as a blog but, at the same time, it provides a larger and more satisfying canvas than writing short updates or tweets.

In other words, Tumblr lets you eat your social media cake and have it too.

Amid the growing attention on Tumblr, I decided to dust off my account to see whether the fuss was justified. What I discovered is that Tumblr is a different and unique social media service.

The most compelling aspect is it can be used to do just about anything depending on your interests or mood. Tumblr is user-friendly and a way for people to create and distribute content in a way that feels satisfying. It’s like having a meal in which you feel like you’ve eaten just enough.

As an enthusiastic blogger and Twitter user, Tumblr has taken some adjustment, as well as time to figure out how it fits into my social media portfolio. To be honest, it’s still work in progress.

Right now, I’m feeding Tumblr with content from other blogs but this doesn’t seem like the right use for Tumblr. Instead, Tumblr strikes me as a place for different kind of social media activity – photographs, a place to put the spotlight on good content, share music or video.

The other thing that is interesting about Tumblr is how it enjoyed steady growth until it finally burst into the spotlight this year. The company focused on providing a useful, user-friendly service while avoiding the hype that has probably damaged Foursquare’s prospects.

Now, the stars and moon are starting to align for Tumblr to the point where it may be poised to join blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube as the top-tier social media services.

By Mark Evans - August 24th, 2010 - No Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

Is There Life Beyond the Social Media “Big Five”?

For all the companies operating in the social media marketplace, there are really only five options for companies looking to establish a strong presence: blogs (WordPress), Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

This is where the biggest “parties” are happening so it makes complete sense to focus your efforts on them. The “Big Five” sport the biggest audiences and, in theory, offer the biggest bang for the buck.

Their emergence as the dominant players reflects the natural evolution of any market in which there is a small group of large companies and a large pack of smaller companies with lots of aspiration but little market share.

One of the key questions, however, is whether there’s any value for companies to consider activity beyond the “Big Five”? Does it make sense to explore the use of MySpace, Foursquare, Flickr, Tumblr, Friendster or Orkut? And what about Gowalla, Posterous, Digg, del.icio.us and StumbleUpon?

While it is easy to just focus on the “Big Five”, there are plenty of interesting opportunities to leverage other social media services to serve different interests, audiences and geographies.

For example, MySpace, still had 64 million unique U.S. visitors last month, and has maintained its status as the social network for musicians and music fans. The company recently unveiled a new, cleaner home page that looks a lot like Facebook’s.

For companies looking to attract audiences in Brazil and Asia, Friendster is worth considering, while Google’s Orkut is a strong presence in India and Brazil.

Flickr doesn’t get much attention these days as Yahoo struggles to find its way but it had 23 million unique U.S. visitors last month. Tumblr is gaining a lot of traction as a user-friendly alternative to WordPress, while Digg is showing signs of life after badly sagging.

And then there’s new, emerging markets such as location-based services in which Foursquare and Gowalla are battling to establish strong footholds. Although still unproven, companies such as Ann Taylor and Starbucks are experimenting to see whether they have potential as new social media channels.

The challenge for many companies is trying to sift their way through the multitude of social media choices. In many cases, it is easier to simply stick to the “Big Five” because there’s less risk or guessing involved. It’s like the old adage that “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM”.

That said, there are alternatives definitely worth exploring to take advantage of niche, emerging and geographic opportunities.

For some companies, using social media services off the beaten track could be a way to differentiate themselves in a marketplace in which everyone is using many of the same tools.


By Mark Evans - August 17th, 2010 - 1 Comment »
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Posted in Social Media

Is Twitter Really about Lots of Followers?

I came across an article on how to get more Twitter followers. It includes some pretty obvious tips such as follow people back if they follow you, retweet, and use hashtags.

To me, the more intriguing issue raised by the article is the importance of followers, and how obsessed we should be with having lots of them.

Everyone talks about social media being about engagement and conversations (These are wildly over-used words in my opinion). Twitter is also about sharing resources and content, and using search to quickly find information. This is what makes Twitter so compelling and interesting.

Nowhere in this equation is the importance or need for lots of followers. If followers is a key consideration when using Twitter, you have misguided sense of how to use and approach Twitter.

The “trick” is attracting more followers is not things such as following people back just because they follow you, or retweeting for the sake of retweeting. If you want more followers, focus on doing a great job using Twitter.

Here are my “tips” to attracting more followers.

1. Create a steady flow of tweets that highlight interesting or compelling content (blog posts, newspaper and magazine articles, photographs, videos).

2. Take the same approach tip #1 when retweeting. This not only provides great content to your followers but it encourages the original Twitter user that their tweets are interesting and valuable.

3. Make it easy for people to follow you. If, for example, you write a blog, install a Twitter subscription button, as well as a retweet button. If people like your blog posts, make it easy for them to become a follower.

The common denominator is not to be blatant or overly-focused on attracting new followers. It is more important to generate content that people find interesting enough that they will want to follow you.

To paraphrase W.P. Kinsella’s “Field of Dreams”, if you build [a strong Twitter presence], they [followers] will come.

By Mark Evans - August 16th, 2010 - 4 Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

Comments: Social Media’s Orphans?

When blogs were the greatest thing since sliced bread, the comments came fast and furious – probably because it was so easy to leave your opinion and participate in a new forum.

Today, it seems comments have become a social media orphan. While there are still plenty of people leaving comments (and thanks to everyone who takes the time to write comments on our blog), it just seems like the comment has been shuffled to the corner.

Perhaps people find it easier to leave a “comment” on Twitter or Facebook rather than a blog because it creates content for their digital activity as opposed to someone else’s. Maybe it’s services such as Friendfeed that are moving comments and commentary away from blogs.

Not that this kind of activity is a bad thing but, in some respects, it does take away from a blog’s vitality and, as important, moves conversations that are often better than a blog post itself to another forum.

As Danny Brown nailed it on the head in a blog post, comments are “digital gold” because they set the stage for real conversations.

So, here’s a toast to the comment. Maybe it have a long and vital existence within the fast-changing social media landscape.


By Mark Evans - August 3rd, 2010 - 9 Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

Should the BlackBerry Go Social?

In many respects, this is going to be an important week for Research in Motion and the BlackBerry. Facing increased competition from Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android, the BlackBerry is being viewed as vulnerable and in jeopardy of losing its status as one of the world’s leading smartphones.

While the BlackBerry has maintained its strength in the corporate marketplace that values its rock-solid email and voice service, the BlackBerry’s consumer foothold is, at best, modest despite efforts to pimp its look and features.

The reality is the iPhone is sexy; the BlackBerry is your father’s smartphone.

This week, RIM is expected to unveil its new OS 6.0, which could include a Web browser that actually works. There’s also speculation RIM could unveil plans for a tablet computer to compete against the iPad.

In the midst of BlackBerry’s challenges, an interesting trend is how the device has gained a foothold with younger consumers. While they are not totally thrilled with the BlackBerry brand given its corporate roots, they like using it because the QWERTY keyboard makes it easy to use text-messaging and social media services such as Facebook and Twitter. If you take a look at younger consumers, the BlackBerry seems to be alive and well.

Given this foothold, maybe a logical strategic direction for RIM is pushing to become the social media smartphone. Rather than trying to out-Apple Apple, RIM should tightly integrate Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc. so they become a seamless part of the BlackBerry experience.

If RIM makes social media on the BlackBerry so user-friendly and intuitive, it might be able to capture more of the youth market to counter the iPhone’s appeal to the geeks and cool kids.

At the same time, RIM should embrace an Open API system, and encourage developers to create applications to make the BlackBerry even more social.

There’s no doubt this would be a bold step in a new direction for RIM but if can become the “social smartphone”, it would be a terrific way to complement its strength in the corporate market.

By Mark Evans - August 2nd, 2010 - 3 Comments »
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Posted in Social Media, Technology

Things Not to do on Twitter

There’s lots of advice about what to do onTwitter. But what about what not to do?

What are the things that can create a bad experience or a disaster. Here’s a list of things to avoid:

1. Fail to provide anything of value. Every tweet should make a contribution – be it a piece of information, a link to an article or blog post, or a comment about something you’re doing or seeing.

What doesn’t fall into this category are tweets that are of little interest to few people. Do people really care that you’re going for a cappuccino, or that you’re tired because its hot outside.

2. Be anonymous or fail to provide enough personal information. While tweets can disclose a lot about who you are and what you do, it’s also good to have a profile that offers more information and insight. This can include a good bio and a link to a blog or Web site.

3. Continually promote yourself or your company. Social media is not a “hard sell” medium, which means that constantly tweeting about your products or services is bad form. This kind of activity can be acceptable IF you provide a variety of other content about other people, companies and events.

4. Tweet too much. It’s great to be enthusiastic about Twitter but over-tweeting isn’t cool. My personal take is more than 20 tweets/day is a no-go, even for people offering a steady flow of good content. It’s like going to a party and dominating the conversation. It may be interesting but leaves people out of the loop.

5. Trash talk. Constructive criticism is a good thing but attacking people via Twitter is disrespectul. What wouldn’t go over well in person shouldn’t be done on Twitter.

6. Failing to provide links to other sources. One of the most valuable parts of Twitter is making it easy for people to discover new articles, Web site or online services.

7. Auto-reply or auto-follow. Automation some elements of social media is a good thing to improve your productivity but there are some things that should be on this list.

By Mark Evans - July 21st, 2010 - 18 Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

The Joys of a Small Social Media Arsenal

Social Media Today had a post earlier this week on “When Not to Have a Twitter Account”, a sacrilegious thought to all of us Twitter junkies.

That said, the post did remind me that it’s okay not to have a Twitter account or, for that matter, a blog or a Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Flickr or MySpace account.

And while it is possible not to embrace social media, a more reasonable approach is that it’s perfectly fine to have a small social media presence.

Yup, your digital existence can be happy and fulfilling by only embracing a single social media service.

It could be Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or a blog as long as it meets your goals and objectives and, as important, the needs of the target audience.

The key – and I repeatedly stress this point – is that whatever social media service is deployed, it is important it is used effectively and well. In other words, if you do only one thing, do that one thing great.

It’s like deciding to open a bakery to only make cupcakes. As long as those cupcakes are delicious, you’re not going to be penalized for not baking pies, cakes and muffins.

Too often, social media is viewed in terms of quantity rather than quality. There’s too much focus on the number of tweets, likes, comments, page views, comments, Diggs, etc. rather than the quality of the conversation.

The same approach works for social media services. It’s far better to do one thing really well, rather than many things average.

This is not to suggest some people and companies can’t have a social media arsenal with several tools but less can sometimes be more.

By Mark Evans - July 15th, 2010 - 1 Comment »
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Posted in Social Media

What’s Next for Twitter?

A statement and a question about Twitter.

Statement: There is probably no social media company – or online company, for that matter – that has attracted as much attention, fascination and head-scratching.

Question: Can Twitter become anything more or other than what it is right now – an extremely popular online communications tool with uncertain prospects of ever making major amounts of revenue?

It is a discussion thrust into the spotlight once again as Twitter’s attempt to introduce a new way to look up friends on Facebook has been apparently been blocked by Facebook.

This is yet another example of how Twitter seems to repeatedly stumble strategically even as it continues to attract more users, as well as third-party developers working to make the platform more useful.

Even Twitter’s big stab at monetization – contextual advertising – seems to have run into a major hiccup. Despite all the hype that Twitter had finally landed upon a way to make money, the advertising machine is nowhere close to gaining any momentum.

In many respects, Twitter’s strategic struggles are as fascinating as its rapid growth and embrace by more people and companies around the world. It would be fair to say that everyone wants Twitter to succeed because it offers so much value to so many people.

The ongoing challenge facing Twitter, however, is coming up with a way to pay the bills unless, of course, the ultimate goal is getting acquired by Google.

By Mark Evans - June 24th, 2010 - 3 Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

What Your Twitter Followers Say About You

Have you spent time thinking about who’s following you on Twitter? Who are these people and what kind of status do they enjoy within the TwitterSphere.

To learn more about followers, we used our MAP social media analytics service to explore people following five celebrities, five social media heavyweights and five media organizations.

We wanted to learn two main things: the differences between the five people within each group, and the differences among the three groups themselves. We based our study on two criteria: the number of followers that someone has, and the authority ranking of their followers.

We base “authority” on the number of followers, following, updates, retweets and several similar measures. For each of the 15 users in our study, we looked at the average authority ranking for their followers, and the countries where they are located.

We discovered that social media “heavyweights” have followers with the highest authority, followed by news organizations and and celebrities. Celebrities, on the other hand, have the most followers, followed by social media “heavyweights” and news organizations.

The full report can be found here.

By Mark Evans - June 16th, 2010 - 2 Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

How Many Tweets is Too Many?

Twitter is easy to use because, after all, it takes little time to knock off 140 characters (or less).

But just because a tweet can be done quickly, does it mean the number of tweets someone does per day is limited only by the amount of time they have to do it?

There are, for example, many people (including some high-profile bloggers, consultants and high-tech industry executives) posting 30, 40 or 50 tweets/day. It raises a few questions:

1. Why do they need to tweet so often?

2. Where do they get the time to do so many tweets? How do they fit all this tweeting in a day of work?

3. Is there anyone out there eager to receive this wave of tweets each and every day?

Personally, anyone who posts more than 20 tweets a day is probably creating noise rather than value. It is difficult to justify following someone who creates so many tweets because they can easily crowd out other people. As well, the quality of the tweets often fails to match the quantity.

A logical suggestion for anyone who tweets so often is maybe devoting their time and energy to a blog in which 500 words is completely acceptable. Of course, blogging is a lot more challenging than Twitter because you need to write in complete sentences, and provide context and perspective as opposed to a quick thought or idea.

To be fair, many people who tweet frequently are offering a wide variety of good content, which wouldn’t be possible if they focused on writing a blog post or two per day.

But you still have to ask whether tweeting 50 times/day is valuable and interesting, or self-serving and indulgent.

What do think? How many tweets/day is “acceptable”?

For details on the most active users of Twitter, here’s some information from a report we did last August.

By Mark Evans - June 11th, 2010 - 16 Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

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