Quicktake Analysis: What Twitter’s “Promoted Tweets” Means To The Ecosystem
The Altimeter Group was pre-briefed by Twitter COO Dick Costolo last week about this upcoming launch, we’ve had some time to think over what it means to the industry. Help your boss fight through the clutter, send them this post. Summary: Twitter has launched Promoted Tweets, combining paid and organic media. Brands can now advertise promoted tweets on search pages, however the community has power over which tweets will appear measured by Twitter’s new metric called “resonance” which factors in behaviors like the retweet, at, hash, avatar clicks. Brands can now purchase CPM based ads to promote these popular tweets at the top of a Twitter search term –even in categories they aren’t well known in, influencing awareness. Marketers beware: unlike traditional advertising or social marketing this is both a combination of earned media and paid media. For Twitter this experimental move makes sense as it taps into deep pockets of online advertisers without jeapordizing sanctity of the community as users will self select which tweets will resonate and thereby become promoted ads. How it will work, a likely use case scenario: Twitter users will continue to interact with each other, and popular tweets will receive a high ‘resonance’ score from Twitter. Some of these Tweets will be created by brands, and some by the users themselves. Tweets with heavy resonance can be purchased by advertisers in a CPM basis to appear as the first ’sponsored’ Tweet on a search term. The sponsored tweets will be clearly labeled and have a different background color. These promoted tweets will only stay if users continue to resonate with them, those that don’t will disappear and a different tweet with resonation will appear. Matrix: What Twitter’s Promoted Tweets Business Model Means to the Ecosystem This has several implications to the ecosystem as a whole, we’ve broken down the impacts to the various players in this matrix: Player Direct Impacts What They Will Do What No One Tells You Twitter Finally gets a business model beyond search deal partnerships with potential to scale. Taps into deep pockets of online advertisers. Experiment. Expect black and gray hat marketers to try to game this system, in order to obtain resonance. Twitter will constantly tune algorhythm like Google does. Expect this to cascade to their partners and grow into the ecosystem as Twitter aggregates resonation on other 3rd party sites Twitter Users Have power over which promoted ads will stay visible Initially be shocked by changes, then learn they can help self select tweets that will be promoted.. In the real time resonace world users have a lot more power Power tweeters like celebs and digerati will be targeted by marketers to engage and resonate tweets. Twitter users that retweet tweets may be surprised to see their promoted tweets in search engine results ads. Social Marketers The conversation is now being monetized, with changes to the outcomes of whats expected of the online conversation and engagement. Educate traditional marketers. These folks will try to increase resonance of tweets by interacting with community. Will build an inventory of top promotable tweets Don’t go overboard, make sure you think of this in the larger context of integrated marketing. Avoid shiny tool syndrome. Must pay close attention to what terms are resonating with community to build inventory Direct Marketers and Advertisers Finally traditional advertisers and direct marketers have skin in the social game in a way they know. Flail. Many will try to buy their way in and obtain resonation without asking why a tweet resonates. Will fight over top searched terms in Twitter, expect a lot of contests to promote tweet engagement. Expect tension between this marketer and the social marketer if education is not completed. Developers and Agencies A clear goal (resonation) has been put forth, with opportunity to get a cut of the incoming advertising dollars. Developers are waiting with baited breathe for Chirp developers conference this week to see how this will be tied in. Twitter has indicated that promoted tweets will spread to clients, expect revenue sharing to be offered Don’t buy the first ‘resonation solution’ that comes around, expect half a dozen vendors and agencies to approach brands in the next quarter offering the ability to increase ‘resonance’ and case studies will show increase in resonance. Competitors and Search Engines A new player being in town a new form of advertising is afoot changing the game. Expect nervous deals to come to the table on how search engine results can factor in Twitter’s resonance. Expect players like MSFT and Yahoo to quickly launch their version of defining how the social web should be categorized. They will have the advantage of built in ad base of advertisers and millions more users. Expect existing Twitter partners Google Search and Microsoft Bing will fold this in and reward resonance and combine with page rank, or will create their own metric to reward social engagement For Resonation, Brands Must Pay Closer Attention To Users –This Isn’t Traditional Spray And Pray. Power continues to be in the hands of the users, however brands that pay attention to why tweets resonate will have a leg up. here’s how you should approach this new space: Change your mindset, as organic and paid merge: This is a combination of organic and paid ads, you’ll need skills from both worlds to be successful. Direct marketers should educate social marketers, and social marketers should explain how resonation occurs in the conversational web. Remember, this gives top tweets staying power beyond the constant stream of chatter. In the end, remember that users have power over which advertising inventory will be created, chosen, and allowed to stay as a promoted tweet. Remember Twitter users have power over which promoted Tweets will work: Remember that users they get to choose which tweets can be put into the advertising inventory as their interaction will self select which tweets can become promoted. Secondly, promoted tweets that don’t yield community engagement will also fall off the stream. is that in the real time resonance world users have a lot more power. Brands must analyze what works for users first before promoting tweets. Then, carefully pick tweets to be promoted by analyzing the conversation: First, monitor which tweets are already resonating with your brand, take note of what is causing it to resonate and in what context. Secondly, recognize that these tweets should have long term impact, not a daily special as the tweet is promoted, users will interact with it, forcing it into a viral loop. For best results, experiment with promoting tweets from your customers –not just those that you create. Recognize that ‘Resonance’ is the page rank of microblogging: Advertising agencies and social marketing agencies will come out of woodwork with “resonance solutions”, yet most will do it wrong. Instead, look for a sophisticated partner that knows the value of social conversational marketing to create an inventory and the long term experience of an advertising agency. Expect resonation to also cascade to other social networks like Facebook and even community platforms and content management systems to derive what content should surface. Twitter has made nods to new dashboards to appear, expect your agency partners to align around resonation as the new ROI. This post is the result of the collaborative efforts of the Altimeter team including Charlene Li (Leadership), Alan Webber (Web User Experience/Government), Michael Gartenberg (Mobile and Devices) and Christine Tran (Customer Strategy Research), learn more about the Altimeter Group . For more news, see Twitter blog , AdAge , and NYT for details . > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >
Google’s Latest Acquisition: Plink, Mobile Visual Search Startup
Google’s newest acquisition is Plink , makers of a visual search application for mobile devices called PlinkArt. The app “recognizes almost any work of art,” claims the app’s homepage , “just by taking a photo of it.” In addition to the visual identification aspect, Plink users can also discuss the art within the app, send images to friends or order prints of the artwork. On its own, Plink sounds like an entertaining and educational tool, but one whose real-life implementations would probably be limited to a tour of an art museum or a late-night cram session for an Art History exam. But Google didn’t just buy Plink for the art it can identify – that’s just an added bonus. It’s likely that Google bought the company more for the algorithm that powers the smart application and brains of those who invented it. Sponsor According to a post on the Plink company blog , developers Mark Cummins and James Philbin, Oxford PhD students whose company was only four months old when acquired, will now join Google to commence work on the search giant’s “Google Goggles” project. This ambitious, futuristic mobile search application is already available for Google’s own mobile OS, Android, in a limited format. At the moment, you can use Google Goggles to take pictures of real-world objects like landmarks, logos, books, contact info, places, wine and – oh yes – artwork, too. The mobile application then recognizes the images and objects in your pictures and that, in turn, kicks off a Google search for whatever item it finds. While on the one hand, it does seem amazing that a mobile application can “see” the world like this, the reality is that this sort of mobile search experience is still in its infancy. Unlike with Google’s text-based search engine, there’s no guarantee that the app will be able to recognize the image in your photo. Was the photo too blurry? Too dark? Or was it a building (book/place/etc.) that the app doesn’t know yet? But just as how the original tablet computers were heavy, clunky, inelegant devices that blazoned a trail that led us to the sleek and shiny iPad, a tablet some now claim will “revolutionize” computing, Google Goggles could one day lead to a world where everything we see – including people! – can be identified through the eyes of camera and an algorithm. That’s a somewhat frightening concept, but one that’s also incredibly exciting at the same time, we have to admit. Plink will now become a part of that effort, enhancing Goggles’ artwork search engine while the engineers bring their talent and ideas to forward the project as a whole. “There are beautiful things to be done with computer vision,” reads the blog post signed “Mark & James.” “It’s going to be a lot of fun,” it concludes. For us, too. (Originally reported via the Guardian ) Discuss
E-Books on the iPad: iBooks vs. Kindle for iPad
Ever since Steve Jobs first announced iBooks for the iPad, pundits have been wondering about the future of the Kindle and similar e-book readers in the face of this new competition. Now that we actually have access to an iPad , we had a chance to take a closer look at both the iBooks and Amazon’s Kindle for iPad apps. We are still waiting for the B&N iPad app, but both iBooks and iPad for Kindle already highlight the iPad’s potential as an e-book reader. Sponsor iBooks It doesn’t come as a surprise that Apple managed to develop the prettier e-reader app. Switching from the iBooks store – which looks a lot like the App Store – to your bookshelf is done through a nifty animation. Newly downloaded books and samples smoothly slide into the bookshelf and thanks to a faux 3d look and a page-flip animation, the app itself mimics the look and feel of a book. When you click on a book in your shelf, it flips open and zoom to the page you left off. Flipping the iPad to landscape mode switches iBooks from displaying on page per screen to a more book-like two-page view. Given how wide the iPad’s screen its, this makes it a lot easier to read as the individual lines are much shorter. With regards to customization, iBooks allows its users to change the size of the font, but also the font itself (Baskerville, Cochin, Palatino, Times New Roman and Verdana). You can also set the screen brightness right from within any book, which is great for reading at night. As far as we can see, however, you can’t switch to white text on a black background. Another neat feature is the search function that feels a lot like Spotlight on OSX. This search feature is extremely fast – though sadly it only works for the book that you are currently reading. You can’t search through all of your library, though you can initiate a Google and Wikipedia search from within any book (these open up Safari, however). The iBooks app can also read DRM-free ePub texts. You simply download the e-book to your computer, drag it into iTunes and after your next sync, it will appear in iBooks. iBooks Store The iBooks store mostly features books between $9.99 and $14.99 (with a few outliers). There are currently about 30,000 free books in the store (courtesy of Project Gutenberg) and about 60,000 books from most major publishers – though there are still some holdouts . Every book in the store allows you to download a free sample (sometimes more than 50 pages long). Kindle for iPad Amazon, of course, offers a far larger store than Apple. With close to 450,000 paid and free books. It’s worth noting that the Kindle store also launched with slightly more books (about 88,000). Compared to iBooks, Kindle for iPad feels a bit more pedestrian, as it doesn’t feature fancy animations. Pages just slide left and right and instead of two-page view when you flip the iPad to landscape mode, you just get a single page with a very wide layout. The Kindle app also doesn’t allow users to customize the font of a book, though it does offer the standard screen brightness and font size settings. Unlike the iBooks app, which only has a bookmark feature, the Kindle app allows users to annotate books and highlight passages in these texts. For students, this is a must-have feature and it’s surprising that Apple didn’t include this in its app. As with its other mobile apps, Amazon forces its readers to download apps from the Kindle online store. The only way to access this is through the browser. Here, Apple’s ability to integrate the store into the e-reader application is a big plus. Verdict: iBooks is the Better App; Kindle is the Better Platform In terms of functionality, the choice between the two apps depends on your needs. If you need to highlight and if you want to take notes, then the Kindle app is the only way to go. If you just want to read, the iBooks apps is just fine. Prices in both the iBooks and Kindle store are likely to be very similar – especially now that Amazon is slowly giving up on its idea of selling all e-books at $9.99. The real advantage of the Kindle app is that you can read and sync books with more devices. You can start reading a book on the iPad at home or on the plane, for example, and then continue reading on your iPhone while you are waiting in line at the post office. Chances are that Apple will launch an iBooks app for the iPhone sooner or later, but until then, investing in Kindle books seems like a smarter decision as you don’t lock yourself completely into Apple’s smaller ecosystem. More About the iPad Launch Click here for our full archive of posts about the iPad launch . Discuss
Twitter Highlights Popular Tweets, Goes Live With API
Twitter turned on its new “popular” tweets feature in its search page last night, bubbling the three most popular tweets to the top of any search result. Previously, search results were only offered according to time, not any form of relevancy. In addition to the search feature showing up on search.twitter.com , the functionality has been turned on in Twitter’s search API, so we’re likely to see this sort of thing showing up in third-party clients soon, as well. Sponsor Don’t be confused if popular search results aren’t showing up when you search directly from the Twitter homepage – you need to specifically go to search.twitter.com for these new results to come up. For some reason, searching from the right-hand sidebar gives only results ordered by time. From the Twitter API Google Group on how tweets will be ordered: With this new project, we want to make real-time search even more valuable by surfacing the best tweets about a particular topic, by considering recency, but also the interactions on a tweet. This means analyzing the author’s profile, as well as the number times the tweet has been retweeted, favorited, replied, and more. It’s an evolving algorithm that we’ll be iterating on & tuning until practically the end of time. While the Twitter search returns only three results, the API should return more if desired. The API is opt-in, as we wrote last time , and offers the ability to get only new results, only popular results, or a mix. We’re immediately wondering how this might be used with the geocoding variable. Will we see similar functionality to the location trending on Foursquare or Gowalla? What does mean to identify tweets as singular hubs of conversation, like we see with Techmeme? Trending topics are just that – topics surrounded by many tweets. This makes the focus center not around many people talking about a topic, but instead a few tweets that many people are centering around. We know we’ve seen similar implementations with the likes of TweetMeme , but now that it’s in the API, what will we see next? Discuss
Wolfram Alpha is Coming to the iPad and E-Books
Yesterday, Wolfram Alpha announced the price drop of its iPhone app and the return of its mobile site. Today, after Apple itself broke a press embargo that was originally set for Saturday, Wolfram Alpha is also announcing the launch of its iPad app, as well as the launch of its new Wolfram Alpha for e-books program. The fact that Wolfram Alpha would launch an iPad app – which will retail in a bundle with the iPhone app for $1.99 – doesn’t really come as a shock. The e-book program, however, comes as a bit of a surprise, but makes perfect sense in light of Wolfram’s new push towards making Wolfram Alpha ubiquitous. Sponsor Wolfram Alpha for E-Books The first application to make use of Wolfram Alpha for e-books is the visually stunning iPad version of Theodore Gray ‘s best-selling The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe . The e-book application integrates Wolfram’s computational knowledge engine closely into the e-book experience. It’s easy to imagine calculus, engineering or geography textbooks that will also make use of Wolfram Alpha’s vast data repository and its ability to manipulate this data. For now, the company is remaining relatively quiet about the exact details of the program, however. The full launch is scheduled to happen later in Q2 2010. As Wolfram Alpha’s managing director Barak Berkowitz noted yesterday, the team’s “number-one priority as of today is to get Wolfram|Alpha in the hands of everyone.” This new e-books program is clearly another move in this direction. Wolfram Alpha iPad App Wolfram Alpha’s newly affordable iPad app will make good use of the extra screen estate on the device. It will use a two-pane view, which looks like it will become a standard interface for many iPad apps. A sidebar on the right will feature your search history, examples and favorites, while the left side will display your results. We will take a closer look at the app once we can test it ourselves. Discuss