Twitter ads business model

Twitter is planning a new ad funded business model according to Charles Arthur writing in the Guardian this morning.

He quotes a story coming out of All things digital which claims that

1. Ads will be tied to Twitter searches, in the same way that Google’s (GOOG) original ads were. So a search for, say, “laptop,” may generate an ad for Dell (DELL). The ads will only show up in search results, which means users who don’t search for something won’t see them in their regular Twitterstreams.

2. The ads will use the Twitter format–140 or fewer characters–and will be distributed via the third-party software and services that use Twitter’s API. The services will have the option of displaying the ads, and Twitter will share revenue with those that do.

3. Twitter will work with ad agencies and buyers to seed the program, but plans on moving to a self-serve model like Google’s, down the road.

The impending decline of twitter

“I believe that in two years the Twit­ter brand will be in the same posi­tion as the Netscape brand is in now: Twit­ter will be cred­ited with start­ing the rev­o­lu­tion, and paving the road for fol­low­ers. But at the same time, it will be pushed into a minor posi­tion in the mar­ket with other play­ers tak­ing the lead or, as is the case with Netscape, will no longer exist.”

The words of Yanvi Golan who doesn't believe that there is a long term future for twitter.

An early adapter overtaken by new entrants and eventually put out of its misery?

the blocks are being laid out, one by one – the building blocks for an open, distributed, decentralized Twitter-like experience, which is based on widely available and well known technologies instead of proprietary ones.

Twitter looking to businesses to monetise the model

For me the most interesting part of yesterday's NESTA sponsored discussion on twitter was the news that the company is looking at launching corporate accounts that would help the site begin to generate revenues.

Biz Stone dropped this into the conversation adding that they hoped to roll out some of these tools by the end of the year

“This takes advantage of some of the commercial use of Twitter we’ve seen from businesses like airlines and big box stores,” he said, “We want to present to them a layer of features that allows them to become better at Twitter, show them some of the analytics.”

The discussion features Stephen Fry, Biz Stone, Founder and Chief Executive of Twitter; and Reid Hoffman, Founder and Chief Executive of LinkedIn who discussed the future impact of social media.

You can watch the whole thing here

Tweeting in 1889

Well they certainly look like tweets.This was the Boston Daily Journal. December 5, 1889.

the longer I stare at these old newspapers, the more I am bewitched by the cumulative insanity and variety and intellectual free-fall of these deep stacks of randomly interesting nonsense.

Ht-The Hope chest

What will happen to tweets of Demi Moore's bottom

The crackdown on twitter continues as Hollywood film studios are now stopping their actors from using the social media service.

In accordance with the industry's long tradition of keeping its biggest names on a tight leash, Disney and DreamWorks have both decided that the "talent" needs to be kept under close control online. Both studios have inserted clauses into employment contracts to stop stars sharing personal thoughts that might interfere with their carefully-honed public images. reports the Independent

Although as they add

Quite how this will affect Ashton Kutcher's ability to "tweet" photographs of wife Demi Moore's bottom remains to be seen:

Did Marx predict twitter?

An interesting argument from Chris Gillow who asks

Does the Trafigura/Carter-Ruck case vindicate Marx? ie
Marx argued that technical change was a powerful force behind social change, so technology influenced power relations between people:

Would Trafigura have got away with it without the new media?

In the pre-web age, they might well have gotten away with trying to suppress free speech. But thanks to technical change - the emergence of the web and twitter - their efforts backfired spectacularly and inadvertently led to one of the most effective viral marketing campaigns of recent years.

Newspapers and twitter in the US

The news media in the US use Twitter as a promotional tool, with extensive linking to their own news content, with newspapers much more active than TV stations.

That's the conclusion of Marcus Messner who has presented a paper, co-authored with Asriel Eford at the Future of Journalism conference in Cardiff this morning.

Alfred Hermida reports on the paper saying that

Most tweets were news related and only just over 5% were personal. Messner said most of the tweets were pitching the news content of the organisation. Overwhelming, news outlets provided links to their own material, rather than to external sources.

“Would Walter have cut through the noise of “the blogs, tweets and soundbites” to get the facts? I think the answer is yes.”

Yesterday's memorial to the American broadcaster Walter Cronkite featured a medium that I am sure would have been alien to the veteran

As CJR reports

TVNewser kept us up to date this morning by live-tweeting the Walter Cronkite memorial service at Lincoln Center. Besides breathlessly reporting on the veritable “who’s who” of broadcast journalism in attendance, TVNewser noted President Barack Obama’s remarks before Obama jetted off to Washington D.C. to give his healthcare address tonight at 8 p.m.

Newspaper twitter followers up 17%

Malcolm Coles has come up with some twitter stats which say that National UK newspaper accounts had 1,471,936 followers at the start of September, an increase of 213,892 or 17% on August 1 .

You can check out all the figures Here

The top 20 are dominated by the Guardian,the FT and the Times with technology,news,finanacial,travel and media prolific.