Related Digital and Social Media Articles
|
|
Digital and Social Media: “The Pimple” Data Application and Notification tool...
2009/11/01
|
|
|
|
Digital and Social Media: The LoneRaynger scours the Canadian landscape in search of rocking venues to play some guerilla-styled impromptu gigs! Way a go Ray, keep up the rocking work man, we're behind you!...
2010/09/07
|
|
|
|
Digital and Social Media: While those of you may look down upon the lonely Geeks of this world, keep in mind the new-age adage...one that reads as follows:
"...and the Geeks shall inherit the Earth..."
You don't believe...
2010/05/15
|
|
|
2010/06/15
Digital and Social Media:
Paying for Tweets...The Death of Purity! |
|
|
I stumbled upon this little piece of hear-say bullsh*t a couple of days ago and supposedly I’m more out of the loop than a stray Fruit Loop who’s rolled from the box and lies alone in the corner of the pantry. Enough of the food analogies, I’m getting hungry.
Now, the problem all started with an announcement from a company in Japan called Digital Garage (the company responsible for Twitter operations in Japan), who announced that they were going to implement a micro-payment project for selected Twitter users in their local networks. They felt as though this micro-payment option will slowly but surely help monetize the Twitter service in Japan. Now, because I am so out of the loop, I’m not exactly sure when this was released to the public, as this kind of a statement is somewhat common practice when it comes to the wonderful world of Twitter. The option and the problem of monetizing such a service has been an on-going debate that will have the media worlds waging war upon one another in a digital battlezone. |
|
|
Nom Nom Nom...oh wait...it's isn't free? Oh...it is, okay...Nom Nom Nom!!!
|
Thank goodness this is one of a few selected cases of the attempt to bastardize such a free and life giving service. Yes, clearly I am Pro-Freedom when it comes to Twitter. Unfortunately what the Japanese are trying to do is not going to work…if I have to pay to see Tracey McGregor’s tweets I’ll just unfollow (Twitter speak for stay up-to-date with her tweets, or in this case…stop receiving updates from whomever) her and follow someone else who I wouldn’t have to pay for. It’s that simple kids. Don’t do drugs and don’t pay to see tweets.
What way could Twitter resolve this monetizing issue…? Well, I’m not proud to admit it, but I support SponsoredTweets and other advertising plug-ins such as ad.ly, RevTwt and Magpie. Advertising platforms have been popping up everywhere and they have made it extremely user-friendly. One of the referenced articles for this post reveals that signing up to two of these 3rd party advertisement platforms took “less than 5 minutes each” – that’s 10 minutes out of your day for what seems to be an opportunity to make an incredibly profitable passive income stream. The accessibility is there and the user-friendliness of the platforms encourage people to believe that it will possible to make money and make it easily and at a relatively rapid rate – Might want to throw in your 2nd string quarter-back now.
|
|
I can like to Twitter you Twatters...
|
What they don’t you tell is that your “success” (in terms of making money) is directly attributed to the establishment of your current Twitter profile. So if you have 10 followers and are Following 21 036 people, the chances of any adverts being offered to you for your profile will be few and far between, possibly even nil. To explain this as simply as possible, the advertising platforms analyze your Twitter account much the same way that Klout or Twittercounter, another set of 3rd party online platforms that rate your Twitter profile, review your Account based on Direct Replies, Retweets and Reach (the distance for tweets have spread), Demand (generating demand for attention by creating great content), Engagement (relationships built through two-way conversations) and Direct Messages which all influence the basic “value” of your Twitter Account.
Now don’t get your hopes up, there are a lot of down sides to embracing this kind of a service. Before getting into the breakdowns of how the advertising platforms work, here are a couple of points to keep in mind when considering the latter.
|
|
|
Some of the con’s in point form:
The Legendary Fail Whale...it can haz Failure!
|
• If you value your followers, this service might not necessarily be for you.
• Having average or unrelated adverts offered to you to tweet
• Growth is slow, this is not a get-rich-quick-scheme unless you’re Jeremy Schoemaker who charges $2000-$4000 per tweet – insane, I know!
• Loss of purity which is my biggest concern for this entire argument, as much as I support the monetizing of Twitter, either through paying for tweets or 3rd party advertisements, there is something special about Twitter’s purity and if you feel strongly enough about this as I do, we could argue until the goats fall over.
In essence, embracing this kind of movement is summed up on a moral stand point, if you’re all for the purity of the platform and feel like such a service shouldn’t be bastardized with the odd tweet which reads: “Wacky Wednesdays at Steers for only R24.95” then forget everything you’ve been reading for the last 10 minutes. In my personal opinion, which may seem somewhat objective, Twitter is an incredible service, revolutionary to be exact and what it has created is a platform for self-expression, troubleshooting and conversation in the purist way possible, online banter. It was undoubtedly created with the idea of eventually “making money”, all start-ups do and I support this, even though at this moment in time I love the fact that it is untainted by advertising and 3rd party bullsh*t.
|
|
|
A short synopsis on 3rd party advertisers on Twitter can be reviewed as the following:
Re-Tweet this...(flips Twitter-Bird...umm..."the bird")
|
- Your profile is gaining a lot of attention…well done.
- Here’s a product of company “we” think is suited for you to tweet…(Not!)
- BANG……..and the tweet is off into the big bad twittersphere…!
Now it’s not always was as clean cut as mentioned above. With in the platform SponsoredTweets, you’re are not given control over the content/advertisement that is being supplied to you, once you’ve signed up, you set your rotation (ATR = Advertisement to Tweet ratio) and they’re off. This may seem quite ruthless, but in all honestly, it’s probably the least amount of admin out of all the 3rd party advertisers. With regards to ad.ly and Magpie, the service requires more attention as a are able to choose between advertisements offered to you, allowing you to personalized your very own “bastardization”. What is somewhat appealing about these platforms is that you are able to set your ATR and thus allow your profile to breath easily in between tweets.
They also analyze your Twitter profile and suggest a price for an advertised tweet, which you can in essence change as you see fit all they while realizing that if you set “the bar” too high, no one will want to send you an advert to tweet. It’s this fine line that is considered admin. Even with the pre-mentioned platforms, admin is as I said, almost nil, where the frustration might come in is the waiting around for advertisers to find you and offer a specific advert for you to tweet. Even using their suggested tweets price, it can take weeks. Receiving 1 one over a space of 3 months would be enough for anyone to relieve themselves from the platform and retreat back to the purity of Old-School-Twitter.
|
|
If I really think long and hard about this, I wouldn’t mind paying to view selected tweets from some of the online personalities that I Follow, which was what Digital Garage was trying to implement. What I would have an issue about is if one of my favourite personalities all of a sudden tweeted about the latest offering from Verimark (a retail store selling and stocking infomercial crap)…now that would piss me off, but in the same breath, I’d get over it, I’d build my bridge. It wouldn’t prompt me to immediately “Unfollow” that person…I’d deem that to be somewhat shallow in terms of online loyalty.
So the guy/girl is trying to make money, at least they were offered a product to advertise, some of us should be so lucky!
Regards
Social Media Wannabe
|
|
|
|
|
Writer, David Alves 
|
|
|