And Now We Shall View a Tweet From Our Sponsors

Twitter has finally done it.  They have found a way to turn 140-character status updates into a revenue producer.  Hopefully.  Since Promoted Tweets went live yesterday afternoon, curiosity has been aroused as to how this platform will work, and seeing if it will provide a ROI.

Out of all the advertising models Twitter could have adopted, Promoted Tweets is the least obtrusive to users.  If anything, they will welcome them with open arms because they will provide relevant information and be just as obvious as branded Tweets are already.  Twitter is currently a free promotion tool for brands, and by adding this feature, it provides a push to the top.  The message is already out there.  

How will this work?  It's very simple.  The service is rooted in search.  This doesn't mean that every search query will be spammed with Promoted Tweets, or that Tweet Timelines will be overtaken with them.  Currently, Promoted Tweets only come up in searches and not in Timelines.  Twitter wants to make this transition as user-friendly as possible by not driving Tweeters away by tossing in advertising clutter.  With the use of resonance scores, Twitter will manage Promoted Tweets and make sure they are a relevant enhancement to the Twitter experience.

Twitter will have to closely monitor their Promoted Tweets to ensure  they don't screw up their first take at generating revenue, and they plan on doing this by limiting the number of ads.  They're taking baby steps with the roll-out to wean it onto users, rather than slapping them in the face with it.  This is the best approach to try and get users to warm up to the idea of paid-for advertising.  Let's face it, Twitter is already a giant advertising bulletin board, and now they're trying to capitalize on it.  Let's see if this turns into a steady revenue stream for Twitter because it doesn't seem like Twitter is going to disappear from social media anytime soon.

iAd-- The new advertising buzz word

Although it lacked a new iPhone, the Apple iPhone OS 4 announcement this afternoon will leave users, developers and advertisers anything short of disappointed.  Steve Jobs unveiled iAd, Apples advertising platform that will enable advertisers to create ads that will run within applications, instead of connecting users to Safari and out of the app. This process has discouraged users from clicking on in-App ads. 

iAd opens the doors for mobile advertising to become relevant.  Steve Jobs exaplained, "We have a lot of free or reasonably priced apps... we like that, but our devs have to find ways to make money. So our devs are putting ads into apps, and for lack of a better way to say it, we think most of this kind of advertising sucks."  Consumers seek out interaction online, and ad's need more than a little bit of motion  to pull people in, especially on the small screen real estate of an iPhone. 

There are five key features of iAd:
1) Emotion and Interaction
2) Ads keep you in the app
3) Built into iPhone OS
4) Apple sells AND hosts the ads
5) 60% of revenues --> developers

It's going to be interesting to see how advertisers and clients will adapt to this new mobile platform.  Job's demoed an ad for the new Toy Story 3 movie on the iAd platform, and it included embedded videos, posters and even games.  It's almost like an sub-app within an app.  But here is the kicker: it's all built using HTML5. 

HTML5 is a major hot topic for mobile advertising and rich media, in general.  The question will become, are agencies going to be will to develop content for iAd since it will only reach about 40% of the US population of phone users.  It has potential, but we must wait and see what developers can do with it.

SF Giants Tweeting Up the Ol' Ball Game- It is social media overkill?

On April 30, the San Francisco Giants will hold the largest baseball event "Tweetup" in history. A Tweetup is an event where folks come together face to face in real life, not more @'s or RT's. It is the real deal. This is great, right? Using social media to connect with fans is an excellent way to build fan loyalty and retain a solid fan base by allowing fans to interact and engage with their favorite sports team. But to bring these "tweeters” together at an actually game would be even better.

For die-hard Giant's fans, or any sports team fan in general, twitter is a unique way to make fans feel like they are apart of something. How many times have you typed @SF_Giants (replace SF_Giants with your favorite celebrity or sports team) because you feel like the person on the receiving end will hear it? Apparently the Giants heard you because they are leveraging social media to further engage their fan base. However, I'm not sure how a social media "panel discussion" and America's favorite pass time go hand in hand.

The panel discussion is overkill. People go to baseball games for cheap beer, hot dogs, and of course, the love of the game. Why meddle with this winning formula? I must give a tip of the hat to the Giants though, because San Francisco is full of tech savvy people that would go nuts over this.

I would go out of sheer curiosity. $20 for the Tweetup Ticket doesn't seem like a bad deal, it includes the panel discussion, private two-hour Tweetup part, seating in the private Tweetup section, and it comes with a free shirts as well. I'm sold! I hope this includes the tickets as well, as there is no mention of it on the flyer.

These apparent social media experts, while designing this potentially historic event, forgot the basic tenets of social media: their fan base. They put the information out on the interweb hoping their fans would find it instead of continuing the dialogue that social media is supposed to help facilitate between brands and fans. I give the SF Giants a tip of the hat for this attempt because of the potentially genius social media initiated event. Hopefully my cynicism will be proven wrong, but I'll have to wait and see if @SF_Giants can bring their tweeters out to the ol' ball game.

WSJ On the iPad-- No, Not Really

After being on the market for 36 hours, the iPad has no doubt brought new life into the battered publishing industry.  The tablet computer has opened a new chapter, and will reshape the relationship between readers and printed publications.  The first most notable different being how we consume our daily paper.

The Wall Street Journal app, available for free through the App Store, is nothing short of disappointing.  Although it redefines digital publishing through the inclusion of video and ease of navigating the publication like an actual newspaper, how will consumers see this if the "free" app has completely locked content?

It is understandable the WSJ offered their publication on a subscription basis to start, yet as a subscriber to the print edition, I would expect a free trial for the iPad offering at the very least.  $17.20 a month is a steep price to pay for an online version, when I can just log on through safari and read my digital copy.

This app is the first major test of the sustainability of the iPad and users' willingness to pay for content, since much of it can be obtained on the web for free.  I'm willing to pay for content, I subscribe to a "dying" medium.  All I want is a digital supplement, but not at a price point higher than my semester subscription cost.  WSJ, get back in touch with reality.

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