Comments on: Twitter will Introduce an Advertising Model and it may Look Like this

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 03:44:21 +0000

Alex, thanks for your thoughtful comment,

I am glad that you like my commentary on the changes to the Twitter platform. Actually it does already affect each and every one of us regardless of whether we use Twitter.com, a twitter client, or web app. I believe it affects the decisions that Twitter makes and the new RT feature is one of them. The fact that RT’s that use the new RT feature do not show up in the clients and probably will not unless the client uses the web feature affects us all. This means the ability to easily see the reach of our tweets in the client of choice is diminished and we must check twitter’s own RT feature to see if we have been RT’d using this feature. It is a pain in the butt. If I am correct and this was done to facilitate their advertising model, we are all being affected by it.

I think they will use traditional ad models such as adwords etc in associated with search results but think the new model when revealed will be something that would be passed on through to the clients and web apps.

It is possible that Twitter could force the client to serve the adds but limiting API calls unless they comply. I hope it doesn’t come to this, but is altogether possible. I am concerned that all this disruption to the twitter ecosystem is a deterrent to developers and will affect their decisions to work in the platform. This too will affect us all. I also agree with your feelings that they believe their site (and service) is invincible (or irreplaceable) and yes it is comical, and Sad too!

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 03:25:21 +0000

Yes, no RTs’ that use the new feature on twitter.com currently show up in the clients, and it is likely that they won’t unless the client implements the new feature. It is a divisive move that fights for mindshare.

By: Aislinn O'Connor

Aislinn O'Connor — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 02:25:07 +0000

Given that those of us who use 3rd party apps like TweetDeck aren’t affected by the Twitter RT changes, will this make any difference unless/until these apps do the same?

By: Alex Karis

Alex Karis — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:35:40 +0000

Andrew,
I love how your always in the trenches bringing us out to think about the ramifications of each change that is made to this platform. I feel twitter is counting on people using this functionality to much. With about half of all active users utilizing managers, it becomes irrelevant to me. In addition to that is the fact that they have taken too long to develop a model around this, the tribe is too accustomed and conditioned to not having an environment like this that it will just become even noisier (by the way I hate mouseover popups, extremely annoying IMHO) . I don’t care how targeted the ad is, trying to pull of semantic search inside of a conversationally based network is foolish.

Why don’t they just set up a realtime search engine that they advertise or just lease the data to people building semantic search right now. Or Put a google adwords column on the page (which most people are already conditioned/accustomed to in numerous other sites) This would really just be a speed bump to most users..if they want to target users by context. Its very easy to conduct metadata about what they tweet about and pull the google ads in that way. I think they actually believe there site is invincible…kinda comical.

Thanks for being a community Leader Andrew…Alex

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 05:37:53 +0000

Shelly,

You’re the best!
Andrew

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 05:34:32 +0000

Thanks Andrew,

You are correct that they need to monetize and we all need them to do so or we have no Twitter. So the challenge is how to do so without sacrificing usability; heck maybe even adding to usability in certain use cases. I use twitter a lot for conversation and so do others in my network. I wonder if we are outliers (I don’t think so) or typical users.

I look forward to see what they introduce.

Andrew

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 05:26:15 +0000

I agree Dennis

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 05:24:58 +0000

John,

I hope this is exactly what they will do – enable the ecosystem to benefit from the advertising model without detracting from usability. I guess we will soon find out.

By: Mister Yojinbo

Mister Yojinbo — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 05:06:32 +0000

Here’s the deal: We don’t pay anything for Twitter. It’s free. So how does Twitter maintain this service? Ah! They sell advertising. Servers cost real money. Bandwidth costs even more. They have to do something to pay for these things. They’re not a government agency. They need a business model to survive. An old Chinese proverb says if you live under someone else’s roof you must bow your head. Well, if you don’t want to bow your head, don’t live in Twitter’s birdhouse.

By: Alex Schleber

Alex Schleber — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:27 +0000

Good point about the repeat payload possibility for the new RTs, but of course Twitter would still likely want to put ads with tweets even if they’ve not been RT’d yet.

So both ways would be fine, really the genius is simply that Twitter would be adding ads that would be unobtrusive (require an action from you, a form of raising your hand that you’re interested), therefore less annoying and less likely to be ignored, and therefore ultimately a game changer in on-line ads.

I explained more on how I see it playing out here: http://bit.ly/7ijJmH

Also a lot more comments on Scoble’s original post, that my post links to. Overall, I think it can be a good thing, assuming good, reasonable execution by Twitter of course.

And therein may lie the rub: After the relative disaster with the “New Retweets”, I’m not sure how confident I am…