On Social Business

Twitter has been nothing short of a world phenomenon, popular in countries around the world and an undisputed factor in significant political change – and a star for customer service. It continues to grow rapidly, with a recent emarketer study projecting Twitter growth up to 4x higher than Facebook (on a lower base) in 2014. And, there are many of us who greatly value the discovery and connections we achieve through Twitter.

Our own research suggests exposure to social content has a significant impact on brand perception and sales impact (2-7x increased probability of purchase lift based on a restaurant study).  So, the general outlook for social content is bright.

The Problem

Yet even with its success in some high visibility areas and its fantastic growth, it just doesn’t seem like Twitter has quite hit its stride yet.  It has been overshadowed by Facebook and – at least for now – new entrants like Pinterest.

• It’s the #2 social network based on visits, but its current total user active user base is still much lower than Facebook’s (about 1/6 of Facebook in the US, according to eMarketer)

• Engagement is low — monthly average time spent on Twitter (36 minutes) is 91% lower than time on Facebook (6 hours 33 min) and 54% lower than Pinterest (1 hour 17 min), according to Mediabistro/Statista

• As a partial result of this (and probably as a result of other factors such as ad tools and analytics), monetization has lagged, with estimated 2011 revenues of $139.5 million (eMarketer), or about 1/25th of Facebook’s $3.71 billion actual 2011 revenues (S-1 filing).

It seems that these issues are among those threatening Twitter’s ability to increase its momentum with brands and organizations.

The Way Forward

Based on the data above, some of our own research, and some thinking based on work with brands, it appears that there are 3 steps that could make a dramatic difference for Twitter:

A new experimental site, Photocracy.org, is a crowdsourcing initiative to explore whether images are useful in providing brand identity information. The people behind the site, Princeton University student Josh Weinstein and Sociology Professor Matthew Salganik, are currently collecting information on perceptions of 3 countries – the United States, China and Japan – using votes on images of those countries.  Visitors from each country are asked to choose which of 2 pictures is more representative of the country.  Since the site’s launch a few weeks ago, over 100,000 votes have been cast for comparisons like this one:

Photocracy.org US comparison images - cowboy on horse vs. Obama

Why is this useful?  To find out, I asked the people behind the project some questions.

In an earlier post, I summarized the results of a study suggesting that several characteristics of movie word of mouth or buzz correlated well with expected total revenue over the movie’s release cycle.

There’s been a tremendous amount of word of mouth buzz surrounding this past weekend’s release of The Dark Knight, so I wanted to see what types of opening box office might be associated with pre-release buzz.

As a comparison, I also looked at volume of word of mouth around Hellboy II (the top release last weekend).

Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) was not just adventurous, but pretty smart too. As many of us know, Tom convinced a few friends to take on the job of painting a fence by making it seem fun.

Fast forward to the 21st century, and we see the same basic idea being used creatively by Gwap, FoldIt , Brandtags and some similarly entertaining (and secretly useful) little games on the Internet.

This blog is for professionals and individuals who want to successfully create, launch, build awareness of and sell great products/services in the most efficient way possible.  People who’d find the content interesting include: CEOs, CIOs, CMOs, brand and product managers, and advertising & media professionals.

The primary content focus of the blog is on harnessing new technology to market and sell innovative products and services.  Innovation is necessary to compete, but it isn’t just about building better things or providing better services – it’s also about intelligently using tools to connect those great new ideas with the people who (will) love them.

Finally, for innovation to be sustainable, it has to deliver value profitably.

Here are some ideas (from myself and others) on how to harness new technology to make this all click.  Please join in the conversation!