Twitter Updates

While the last post covered some ground in terms of social media, an entity which was conspicuous by its absence was Twitter, perhaps the social media tool that I use the most, these days. From sharing my anguish at Raikkonen ruining the Ferrari party in the penultimate lap of last weekend’s race, to checking out exciting sites/services that others have found, Twitter plays multiple roles in my communication.

There have been several Twitter based services that have been launched since my last twitter post. We’ll start with Twittad. (via Mashable) If you have a not-so-bad twitter following, you can just sign up on the site, give your number of followers, and auction your twitter page to an interested advertiser. Check out the left side of this profile, he got $15 for a month’s display of that ad. Now, the background in Twitter is not clickable, so its just like say, a virtual non-interactive billboard. My bigger concern is that this is visible only to those who use the web interface. If you use say, Twitterfox, a browser plugin, or a desktop client, you may not even see this ad.

That’s not the only advertising model available on Twitter. Another option I came across is Twitterise. This seems a more robust tool, and allows marketeers to use twitter as a platform. With a twitter account, you can schedule communication to go out to consumers, and more importantly track it in terms of response. Read more about it here. Its a nifty lil tool, and once users can get more detailing in terms of the clicks (who, when etc) generated, its a do-it-yourself kit for any brand manager to test out twitter. I’m going to give it a spin very soon, for my brand. 🙂  But the real story is Cherp, which is an entire agency that’s “dedicated to finding brilliant ways to leverage the Twitter platform and network”. I’m lost for words, even 140 characters!! On a sidenote, I read an interesting suggestion for Twitter to get some revenue.

There are some interesting stuff for regular users too. For those who are also active on Digg, there’s a new tool Twiggit, which allows you to let your followers know everytime you Digg an article. Two great services, and one awesome mashup, i think!! The other tool I came across is Lazy Tweet, which works on crowd sourcing your answers. While I already use Twitter to get lots of answers, the next time I want a question answered, all I’ve to do is start the tweet with lazytweet (or a few other options), and I’ll get access to a bigger crowd than just my followers. Read more about it here. If you’re the video kind, Viddler has launched a new service called 15s, which lets you share your 15 secs or lesser video with your twitter friends (via Center Networks). There’s already a player in this market – 12seconds. And lastly, if you’re the textual kind, check out this post on literary experiments on twitter.

I read a post on how a tweet does not make a brand. I agree, one does not, but the idea is of conversation, of engaging with consumers in real time. The objective is to involve the consumer in the idea of the brand and thus make the brand more than a soulless entity that caters to one specific need in their life. Many brands are making an attempt at this conversation, take a look at the stories here. And of all the efforts, I’d rate CNN as the best. In spite of the Olympics argument, it still experiments with the medium. I read a few days back that it was promoting Twitter heavily on air, now that’s what I call great integration. And it’s not just one anchor, the engagement on Twitter is being taken to different levels, including a Twitter show. Really awesome stuff. I hope we get to see more more activity, and from more organisations.

until next time, go tweet

PS. If you use twitter on your blog, and are okay with handling code, you could check out TweetRemote, which allows some level of customisation.