More speculation this week surrounds Twitter – word has it Apple’s dangling $700 million in front of them. Well roll me up in saxony carpet and toss me on down the stairs – but I don’t get it.
If I’m understanding this correctly, the object of Twitter is to get as many complete strangers as possible to “follow” you. In return, you’ll be a swell guy and follow them back. The next step is to “Tweet” mindless nonsense so your “followers” can ignore you in 160 characters or less.
Now that’s not to say that everyone’s Tweets are nonsense and ignored. Only about 99.5% of them. The other .5% are gems worthy of “Re-Tweeting”. Huh? I guess blogging’s become oh-so-2006, which is a bummer because I’m just starting to get the hang of it.
As Twitter-mania spins out of control, we have CNN battling Ashton Kutcher in a race to 1 million followers (which got me thinking, what’s Ted Turner’s commission rate on the $700 million?). An NBA player is reprimanded by his coach for “Tweeting” during halftime of a game. Oh the humanity!
I have a lot of questions, and I know that the Bloodhound Nation is the right place to turn for answers: Is Twitter the new SPAM? What happens when each of us follows 2,500 people and 2,500 people follow us? Do we then just hire an assistant to sort through our daily tweets?
If you’re pro-Twitter, I’d love to hear how you’re putting it to work for you. Are you seeing tangible results? If so, are they scalable – ie: will they diminish w/ clutter or do you foresee future success as Twitter grows? Where does Twitter rank in your Social Media hierarchy?
More importantly, is Twitter a fad? Apparently Apple doesn’t think so. Where do you guys see Twitter a couple years down the road?
daniel says:
Everyone is acting like Apple is throwing 700 Large down the toilet for what they are probably going to call iTwit or iTwat – look at what their designers did with the MP3 player and the cell phone when the game was so over and done with and they had no market share and little hope of breaking into the established market – I suspect that they already know what they are going to do with it before a deal is clinched. Right now it seems like a nuisance but what else could we be doing with it? I wonder how Apple is using it internally–
May 7, 2009 — 12:16 am
Bill Rice says:
Mark, my friend, I am going to have to disagree with you on this one. I can see the Twitter-like paradigm evolving into the new “permission marketing.”
I say this not because I enjoy all of the spammers already infiltrating Twitter, but because there is a whole new generation that doesn’t even think to use email. Email a 12-20-something and see when you get your response–possibly never.
I urge you to read two posts and think what Twitter could become:
Seth Godin reflects back on his conception of Permission Marketing: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/05/ten-years-of-permission-marketing.html
Stowe Boyd talks about moving out of the inbox and into the “stream”: http://www.stoweboyd.com/message/2009/05/from-email-culture-to-stream-culture-out-of-the-inbox.html
It will, as with all new innovation, be interesting to see how it plays out.
May 7, 2009 — 5:12 am
Teri Lussier says:
>The next step is to “Tweet” mindless nonsense so your “followers” can ignore you in 160 characters or less.
It’s 140 characters, but that’s beside the point. 🙂
It’s a lot of chatter- mind numbing, stoopid chatter. But. IF you can learn to tune out the chatter and focus on one or two or a handful of people who are meaningful to you, for whatever reason, that’s where things begin to happen. That’s where real personal relationships can develop. That’s where f2f meetings can take place. That’s where referrals and business are created.
Realtors join clubs, organizations, etc. They don’t have a relationship with all 5000+ members of the mega-church they go to, but they probably have a good relationship with a handful of people. Do they focus on all members, all that chatter, all that drama? Only superficially perhaps, but they do focus where they are comfortable, where they have influence- the choir, the welcoming committee, the bereavement group. Same with twitter.
@BawldGuy teaches door knocking, and he will tell you to find the person in the neighborhood who knows everybody’s business. Same with twitter. Twitter is a ‘hood. Focus on a few people who provide meaning to you.
May 7, 2009 — 6:20 am
Tom Vanderwell says:
What Teri said.
May 7, 2009 — 6:41 am
Tom Vanderwell says:
Seriously, Teri says it well, but in addition to that, let me offer a few details of how Twitter has been useful for me:
1. Connecting with another mortgage lender in Indiana who has a customer moving to Georgia and needs financing.
2. Helping a Realtor in Virginia get some “insights” into how to handle a last minute inspection/utility issue so that he can close his deal on time.
3. Alerting a Realtor in South Carolina about a marketing position that I just heard about from someone in Texas because Realtor in South Carolina’s marketing position (working for a large office) was being eliminated.
4. Keeping up on news – I know what Dan Green and others see happening in the market because of twitter. I’ve heard stories on twitter hours if not days before many find out about them.
5. I got a request for information on a refinance transaction yesterday because of the fact that I’m on twitter.
Am I making money on twitter? Yep. Am I doing my job better because of twitter? I’d say that having the opportunity to interact with different finance and real estate professionals all over the country is helping me understand the bigger picture of the markets better.
With that being said, I want to come back to what Teri said – you need to filter out the noise. There is an awfully huge amount of spam on twitter. I use a program called tweetdeck. I’ve got four columns that I pay attention to: replies (sent to me readable by anyone), direct messages (sent to me privately), news (people like Dan Green, Paul Kedrosky, Ann Curry, the LA Times, the Wall Street Journal, the local news) and real estate people (how does someone get on my “real estate people” group? – by interacting with me. Not spamming me, but talking about things, asking questions, getting opinions).
There, my first answer was a lot shorter, but this I think explains twitter better. Oh, if you want to “follow” me on twitter, I’m @tvanderwell.
Tom
May 7, 2009 — 6:52 am
Teri Lussier says:
Then there’s this: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10235360-2.html
May 7, 2009 — 7:17 am
Mark Green says:
@Bill – I hear ya, and for a select few, I think Twitter will become a huge permission marketing tool. For the typical Twitter user, I’m not so sure.
@Teri – “Do they focus on all members, all that chatter, all that drama? Only superficially perhaps, but they do focus where they are comfortable”
I knew I’d screw the 140 vs 160 thing up! I like your analogy. I guess I’m not sure how I’d go about tuning out the folks I’m not seeing value in. This is why I prefer Facebook/LinkedIn. If I truly value the relationship, I want more from that person. Honestly, beyond Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging, reading other blogs, I’m not sure I have the bandwidth for Twitter.
@ Tom – I also downloaded Tweetdeck and found it cool for about 2 days. Then I noticed it’s a huge drain on my comp’s RAM. Good examples by the way, thank you. Follow up question, if you’re tuning people out, why even follow them? That’s kind the entire point of my article – and the part I just don’t get. Your comment reinforces my belief that Twitter could work for a select few that are highly dedicated to is as a medium.
And finally @ Teri again – I woke up this morning realizing that I’m just getting old. I don’t really need my news to be real time :). Maybe that’s what I’m going through!
May 7, 2009 — 7:54 am
Susan says:
Twitter’s a great way to stay in touch with vendors and affiliates. I get a quicker response via Twitter than I do via email or telephone when I have a question or problem. Twitter is also great for getting feedback on services and products. Just today I learned about major billing problems for a vendor – I will avoid them until they get their billing issues straight.
May 7, 2009 — 8:51 am
Tom Vanderwell says:
Mark,
That’s interesting that you find tweetdeck a drain on ram. I’m running a Dell laptop with 2 gig of ram on mobile broadband and I haven’t had any issues with it draining my system.
I’ve got probably 100 Real estate people and maybe 50 what I’d call news people who I pay attention to. Why do I follow others? Frankly, I haven’t followed anyone lately who hasn’t already chosen to interact with me unless it’s a news person. Does that make sense? If someone reaches out and comments on something I’m doing or saying, then I’ll “follow” them. Otherwise I don’t waste the time.
Tom
May 7, 2009 — 9:13 am
Teri Lussier says:
Mark-
To tune out noise, try Tweetgrid. http://tweetgrid.com/
Or not.
I hate facebook. Hate it. Hate it. Did I mention I hate it?
LinkedIN? Stuffy old folks.
I like the pace of twitter. I’ve tried not to like it, but I do. I like the jump-in and jump-out speed. I like the quick connections. I like that it’s non-committal. I like that I’m not being poked and not asked to take a quiz for which soda pop I’m most like.
And quite frankly, I also like that most people don’t get twitter- more for me.
But Mark, you could have so many conversations going at once, with people who NEED your product. They would get to know you as a person- a funny, charming, smart, sharp, helpful guy who occasionally lets us know that we can benefit from your service. It ain’t brain surgery, it’s top of the mind awareness. Is this where I add a “Duh”?
Watch twitter through tweetgrid for awhile. See if there is anything you can do with that.
sincerely,
An unrepentant Twitterfiend
May 7, 2009 — 9:49 am
Bill Rice says:
Teri, I glad there is another unrepentant fiend in the crowd.
To Tom’s point I use TweetDeck’s (and increasingly DestroyTwitter because of the TweetDeck memory leaks issue) Group feature to segment the people I get real value from and those I want to keep on top of and support.
I am also a big user of TweetGrid for focusing on things I want to know about as it happens.
Great discussion!
May 7, 2009 — 10:33 am
Mark Green says:
You guys (and gals) are such a trip, I knew I’d end up installing another app with the “tweet” prefix in front of it.
Obviously, there’s some legs beneath Twitter. Tom, I think it’s interesting that you’ve become more judicious about who you’re following now. This is the only way I think I’d ever be able to handle Twitter.
I guess I am easily overwhelmed 🙂
We’re in the process of building out our Contact Management component of our CRM system. One of the ideas is to create a field for the contact’s Twitter UN so you’d be able to ping them from your CMS (contact management system.)
Do you think this is a “must have” at this point or a “nice to have”? It certainly seems like it would help us differentiate.
Thanks again for the comments.
May 7, 2009 — 10:56 am
Evan Paul says:
Twitter is still just a baby, but a baby that is primed to become huge – Google huge. That is why everyone is so interested.
They didn’t invent microblogging and it even looks a lot like facebook’s status updates. What sets Twitter apart is that it is the refined version of what all these other companies were heading towards. It could not have caught on before blogging or before Facebook. It is only a success now because we learned those other technologies first.
This is exactly how Google started. They didn’t invent search, they refined and altered it. Google’s innovation was ranking sites based on incoming links. They have done other things, but it was that little change that completely rewrote the web.
Twitter has made a similar change to social networking. We used to network with people arbitrarily and there was no reason to not be friends with someone. Twitter forces us to like the people we follow, because if they say dumb things and spam our twitter stream it is way too easy to unfollow them.
Why does this matter? Because you vote with your follow. If somebody has 100,000 followers they really do have 100,000 people listening to what they have to say. It is a simple transparent vote of confidence and a fairly reliable measure of credibility. Google changed how we find information. Twitter will change how we find respected voices, how we get our news, who we trust.
May 7, 2009 — 11:01 am
Jeff Brown says:
As I finished read this post, I racked my brain for someone more ignorant about twitter than you. Then I started smiling, cuz the answer was…me.
Last year I could’ve written this post. In fact, many of my comments on posts extolling the myriad virtues of twitter are now cause for a red face.
As you are now, I was a bottomless pit of twit-ignorance and misinformation, probably more so.
It took awhile, but my steady presence, along with the mixture of professional and social conversations, has resulted not only in current income, but the foundation for tremendous income in the near and not so near future.
Between referrals and direct business I’ll do six figures this year via twitter. Next year I expect it to more than double naturally, organically. In fact, I’d say twitter’s behavior has more or less mirrored my experience with blogging. After 6-12 months or so you either begin getting consistent traction, or you’re doing it all wrong.
I’ve saved transactions through twitter. I’ve saved other folks from egregious mistakes. It’s sometimes been very gratifying. My blog’s readership has increased significantly directly due to twitter.
Am I making any sense?
May 7, 2009 — 11:15 am
Sue Zanzonico says:
I have gotten to know and build relationships with some wonderful people via Twitter. I also use it as a resource to get questions answered about real estate, technology…you name it. I try to do the same by answering questions for people when I can. I don’t spend alot of time on Twitter and have not gotten any referrals…yet, but who knows what the future will bring. All in all, it definitely has been advantageous for me.
May 7, 2009 — 11:42 am
Thomas Hall says:
For me, it’s quality versus quantity. I have found Twitter to be incredibly valuable in gaining access to individuals within specific organizations where I would normally never have unfiltered access to otherwise.
Bottomline – without a marketing strategy, gaining followers is of little value.
May 7, 2009 — 12:33 pm
Mark Green says:
So what I’m hearing is that Twitter requires its own execution strategy, which makes perfect sense. I’d love to see a few articles here on BHB with some execution ideas folks have found successful.
Jeff, would you mind writing an article about right vs. wrong Twittering?
Thanks again everyone! In 2006 I was telling Mark Madsen how blogging was a complete waste of time, so hopefully by 2012, I’ll have Twitter figured out.
May 7, 2009 — 2:37 pm
Brad Coy says:
Grinning from ear to ear at Bawld Guy’s comment 🙂
May 7, 2009 — 9:21 pm
Jeff Brown says:
There won’t be any posts by me on twitter, as I’d still have to move up the knowledge ladder a few rungs to be a rank amateur.
I’d like to hear from Mark — does any of this make sense to you?
May 8, 2009 — 11:23 am
Teri Lussier says:
There won’t be any posts from me about twitter either because I’ve posted. And posted. And posted.
Mark- It’s a must have. Add the little twitter thingy. Here’s why. I emailed a twitter client (someone I met on twitter) 2 days ago. ::crickets:: Today he responded via a twitter dm. He twitters, he doesn’t email.
Likewise, I’ve received messages from people through LI. Weeks later, I still haven’t responded. Same with facebook. If I want to get my kid’s attn I need to txt them- they never take calls. Some people like email, some like LI, some like it hot. Give the people what they want, and don’t question their preferred mode of communication.
May 8, 2009 — 5:41 pm